Predicting trends in cybersecurity is notoriously difficult. New threats can emerge seemingly out of the blue, with new technologies becoming quickly popular as organizations scramble to protect their data, customers and employees.
But as we look forward to 2020, one thing we can be sure about is the average cost of a data breach will continue to rise. In 2019, the average cost of an attack grew rapidly – by some estimates to $4 million per breach, outlining just how crucial it is that businesses implement strong email security solutions.
In mid-2019, we outlined five cybersecurity trends for 2019, including seeing a rise in phishing attacks, increasing challenges around meeting data regulations, managing remote working and endpoint security, the growth of browser isolation, and managing cloud security.
But what are security analysts predicting as the top cybersecurity trends for 2020?
Email Attacks Will Remain the Top Vector for Threats – With Targeted Phishing and Business Email Compromise (BEC) On the Rise
At the end of 2019, research from security awareness training vendor Knowbe4 found that 91% of cyberattacks start with an email. Specifically, a spear-phishing attempt. Spear-phishing attacks have long plagued IT departments, but as organizations have moved to the cloud, they have become even more sophisticated.
Spear-Phishing targets individual users with fake login pages or fraudulent payment requests, often impersonating companies that an individual may legitimately does business with. This is often highly successful, and can lead to financial loss, or can lead to malware and ransomware infecting company machines. Cloud-based email security clients have some inbuilt protection against these attacks, but are often not able to detect phishing attempts from genuine emails.
Targeted phishing attacks are already becoming more common. Research from email and data security vendor Mimecast revealed that there has been a massive 269% increase in the number of business email compromise attacks reported by organizations.
Business email compromise represents cyber criminals finding a new way to bypass email security defences. BEC involves cyber criminals breaking into high level company accounts, such as the CEO, or other C-level employees, and using this access to trick employees into making fraudulent payments.
To mitigate the effects of these rising attacks, many businesses will be looking to enhance their email security portfolio. In recent years there has been a rise in the number of ‘post-delivery’ protection vendors, that can detect and identify phishing and business email compromise attempts and remove them automatically, even if they have already been delivered to users.
IRONSCALES, is one such vendor utilizing human intelligence and machine learning technologies to identify email senders in real-time and prevent email spoofing and impersonation attempts.
AI powered Automation Will Grow, Both in Security Technologies, and By Attackers
‘AI-powered’ has long been a buzzword in IT technology marketing, but a clear trend for 2020 will be AI technologies becoming the new arms race between IT security vendors and cyber attackers.
AI is an important tool for finding patterns in behaviour that can identify attacks. In email security for example, artificial intelligence can be deployed to learn the communication habits of an organization, using this information to identify anomalies and potential cyber- threats.
AI is also being employed heavily in identity and access management, with businesses increasingly moving towards adaptive authentication solutions. These platforms learn the regular login habits of an individual using AI systems. This can help to accurately predict security breaches, and implement security systems like 2FA and MFA, without disrupting the everyday productivity of the user.
However, AI technology is increasingly being used by cyber criminals to identify patterns in security solutions. AI systems can help cyber criminals to generate more realistic looking phishing pages faster for example, and help them to more effectively spot gaps in security systems and infrastructure. As AI systems become more complex thanks to open-source development, they also become more widely available and simpler to deploy, making it easier for cyber criminals to utilize them.
This game of cat and mouse between cyber criminals and IT security vendors, utilizing artificial intelligence to improve systems and threat detection is already taking place. Hackers are increasingly using automated bots to carry out attacks, such as ransomware on much larger scales. This is in-turn causing more businesses and government agencies to turn to AI powered security solutions to protect themselves against these threats.
There Will Be Increased Migration to Cloud Services
One of the major security trends we’ve seen over the past few years is businesses replacing their IT infrastructure, and in turn their cybersecurity infrastructure, with cloud based security solutions. This trend has rapidly accelerated over the past year, and is very likely to continue into 2020, as cloud solutions become more ubiquitous and more affordable and easier to set-up for smaller businesses.
In January 2019, it was reported that 69% of enterprises are moving business-critical applications to the cloud. 94% of businesses already use cloud services in some capacity, and over the course of 2020, organizations are likely to continue to move their infrastructure to cloud platforms.
Moving to the cloud offers businesses more stability, helps to save money, and through platforms like Office 365, provides features for greater productivity and flexibility. But the move to the cloud also brings with it a host of security challenges, including moving sensitive data, meeting legal compliance needs, identity management and reducing the impact of business email compromise and phishing attacks.
Cloud platforms like Office 365 and Gsuite are great tools for productivity, allowing one account to give users access to multiple documents, applications and workflows. But of course, this also means that if a cyber-criminal is able to access this account, they are able to access far more data than would previously be available. For this reason, as businesses have moved to the cloud, credential phishing attacks have increased.
Cyber analysts have also predicted that dealing with data privacy breaches and regulatory fines will be a key security trend in 2020, as organizations increasingly move data to the cloud and need to ensure that it remains secure. Increasing cloud migration and the associated security challenges will likely be one of the major cybersecurity trends in 2020.
MSPs Will Find Themselves Increasingly Targeted by Cyber Attacks – Especially Ransomware
One of the most harmful cybersecurity trends that developed in 2018 and 2019 was the increased targeting of security managed service providers (MSPs) by cyber criminals. MSPs are relied on by thousands of businesses to maintain and supply critical IT and cybersecurity services that are too complex or expensive to be managed internally. Typically, small, mid-sized, healthcare and smaller local governments are the kind of organizations that rely on MSPs for cybersecurity.
MSPs use remote monitoring services to access their clients’ networks and security solutions, allowing them to monitor activities, fix problems and make sure endpoints are protected and updated. MSPs can maintain the security of dozens of other organizations – which makes them a prime target for attack by cyber criminals. This is especially true for ransomware attacks. Ransomware attacks involve cyber criminals distributing malware which encrypts data on endpoints, making it impossible for organizations to access critical data and documents, unless a ransom is paid. MSPs have increasingly become a big target for ransomware distributors, as a successful compromise leads to multiple organizations being affected.
These attacks against MSPs are becoming more widespread, and this will more likely than not continue into 2020. According to research from Datto 4/5 MSPs agree that they are increasingly being targeted by ransomware attacks. In 2019 there were several examples of MSPs being hit by ransomware attacks by criminals looking to gain access to their client’s sensitive data. In October, the US government had to issue an alert that attackers were conducting a campaign, specifically targeted at MSPs and their clients, which affected major MSPs including Hewlett Packard and IBM. This attack began very simply, with a spear-phishing email campaign which was designed to give attackers access to legitimate MSP account credentials. Cyber criminals would then use these compromised accounts to infiltrate their clients and gain access to sensitive business data.
MSPs are a lucrative target for cyber criminals, due to the large amount of data and clients that they have access to. Successfully being breached can be devastating for MSP customers though, leading to a breakdown of trust with their customers, as well as the costly remediation that it takes to get services up and running again after being hit by a successful ransomware attack. As these attacks are likely to increase in number and in sophistication over the next few years, MSPs will need to take a proactive approach to their own security, in order to better protect their clients’.
The Cybersecurity Skills Shortage Is Likely to Worsen
Over the past few years one of the major problems among cybersecurity vendors and innovators has been the growing cybersecurity skills shortage. Research suggests that during 2020, the number of unfilled cybersecurity jobs will rise to 3.5 million globally, from just 1 million in 2014. Some estimates put the global cybersecurity skills gap at over 4 million, with the problem getting incrementally worse each year.
In the United Kingdom, the cybersecurity skills gap has been described as ‘critical’, with research revealing that 87% of IT professionals finding it difficult to find highly trained cybersecurity experts to fill internal vacancies and combat cybersecurity risks.
This has led to universities becoming more practical with teaching crucial cybersecurity skills, rather than taking a more theoretical approach, with the aim of helping to prepare students to go into hands-on cybersecurity roles. It’s also led to universities and colleges offering discounts on cybersecurity courses, to help encourage more students to take it up as an area of study. However, some have argued that waiting for universities and colleges is not a viable strategy.
It’s likely that cybersecurity vendors themselves will need to help build out the workforce to close the cybersecurity skills gap. This will need to include focussing on training and professional development opportunities, attracting new workers and college graduates and training them with relevant security training, and cross-training existing IT professionals with transferrable skills. These steps were outlined in a report from ISC2.
This cybersecurity skills gap is likely to grow even further in the early 2020s, leading to problems as cyber-criminals continue to grow more sophisticated, while security vendors lack the experts needed to develop the technology to counter them. Dealing with this issue, and putting in place the training and policies needed to close the skills gap, will likely be one of the big cybersecurity trends we see in 2020.
Summary
A final major trend we will likely see in 2020 comes largely as a result of the other trends we have covered in this article – organizations will need to continue to invest more time and resources into their cybersecurity infrastructures.
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