In order to safeguard your company against potential cyber security threats, it’s a good idea to look at previous attacks that have occurred, as a point of reference. Based on data obtained from appknox.com in 2019, here are a number of cyber security facts that would be worth taking note of:
- Every day, about 230,000 viruses are created by hackers, with the number of manufactured malware set for a gradual yearly increase.
- Around 43% of small businesses have been affected by some form of data breach and cyber-attack. Such attacks are often the reason that small companies shut down their business.
- About 91% of cyber attacks begin with a technique called ‘spear phishing.’
The aforementioned data above shows that during 2019, cyber attacks have become increasingly common, and are the cause for a number of significant losses. To safeguard against this problem, and to attempt to reduce the overall number of cases, your company should make the necessary preparations. The very first step to being fully prepared is to understand the cyber security predictions for 2020, which can be seen below:
Table of Contents
Cyber Security Attack Predictions for 2020
Phishing email attacks
Phishing e-mails have always posed a consistent cyber security threat throughout the years, but this is especially the case in 2020. Today, most companies are continuing to improve upon the security means of their e-mails in order to block phishing attacks. In the case of a hacker successfully conducting a phishing email attack, the company can potentially experience a number of losses, ranging from malicious access to their personal data, financial losses, or the installation of malware into the victim’s computer, which can bring about a variety of other losses. Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report from 2019 also informs that phishing causes around 32% of data breaches, which is a significant amount.
Ransomware: A high level threat to Cyber security
Ransomware is a type of malicious software designed to lock access to a computer system and the data within it until a ransom is paid. This type of attack stems from the wide array of vulnerabilities presented from remote desktop protocol and phishing emails, and can cause a company to become inoperable. For companies that don’t know how to uninstall the software, their only choice will be to pay the hackers a large ransom to restore their files. This has been shown to be a quick and profitable way for hackers to scam their victims, and will continue to grow throughout the 2020 period.
Attacks on IoT devices
As Hackers continue to develop increasingly sophisticated methods, it is estimated that the cyber security 2020 attack will also begin to see increased attacks on IoT devices, be it smart-home devices, smart-city devices, or enterprise IoT devices. IoT threats were rarely encountered before 2014, but during the last few years have seen a steady growth of IoT related attacks. Serious risks can arise through this particular method. For example, when smart-home devices are successfully exploited, hackers can then unlock a house’s front door, open the garage, deactivate an alarm, and so on. It is very important for IoT device manufacturers, companies, service providers, and policy makers to jointly create a safer IoT ecosystem and encourage stringent IoT security standards. On the other hand, users must also increase their own security awareness of the possibility of this type of attack.