Staying Trendy: The Top Cybersecurity Trends of 2019

Does the growing threat of cyber threats have you up at night?

It’s not surprising if it does. The 2018 FBI cybercrime report found that cybercrime caused more damage than ever during the year.

You can’t protect yourself if you don’t know what to watch for. This post will tell you what you need to know.

Below are eight cybersecurity trends watch during 2019.

1. More Two-Factor Authentication

You’d think that a strong password would be enough to protect your online accounts. Sadly, that’s not the case. Not with hackers using techniques like privilege escalation to exploit vulnerabilities and weak security controls. Sadly, no system is immune to such attacks, as this article on what is privilege escalation explains. 

Even if you come up with a secure password, there are still ways for hackers to get access to your information.

Because of this, more companies are starting to require two-factor authentication to log in to their services. While you still need a password, two-factor authentication adds another step.

After you enter your password, you will have a code to enter. You can receive this code through email, text message, or through an authentication app on your phone.

This step adds an extra layer of security that makes it harder for attackers to compromise your accounts.

2. Data Regulation

If you haven’t heard about the data breaches over the past few years, you’ve missed out on a lot of controversies.

It started with Facebook with the Cambridge Analytica scandal. A lot of user data was taken and sold to political campaigns to influence the election.

Since then, many other large companies have been the focus of data breach news. Consumers are beginning to demand that governments start to create new regulations for data protection.

This practice started in Europe with the introduction of the GRDP regulations. These rules require companies to follow strict guidelines when dealing with customer data.

Expect more governments to start creating more data regulations in the future.

3. Phishing Becomes Personal

If you’ve used email, then you probably know what phishing is. It’s the emails you get that pretend to be a site you use regularly.

They can copy banking sites, social networks, and any other site on the internet.

Because these sites look similar to the website they’re phishing, you won’t think twice about entering your login information. Once you do this, an attacker has your login credentials.

Because of all the personal information people put on the internet, phishing attacks can get more personal. This personalization means it will be harder to spot these attacks.

Don’t be surprised if you start getting emails that have personal information that you post publicly on social media sites.

If you want to prevent this from happening, be careful where you post your information and what information you make public.

4. AI Cyberthreats

AI has changed a lot in the digital world. In the past few years, there have been more advancements than ever.

AI is good in most cases. We can analyze data and make better decisions today.

But what happens when people begin to use AI for bad? In the future, we can start to see malware and viruses that make use of AI.

This intelligence will make malware harder to detect and harder to get rid of. This will lead to an increased need for IT security professionals to combat these threats.

5. IoT Threats

We live in a more connected world. That’s great most of the time.

We can connect our homes to make them smart and connect with people like never before.

But as more devices become connected, this opens up a new way for hackers to gain access to things they shouldn’t be in.

In fact, experts predict that 2019 will see an all-time high for IoT attacks.

This trend will continue as we keep bring more devices online.

New technology will need to be created to stop these attacks from happening.

6. Cybersecurity Automation

As networks continue to grow larger, it becomes harder for an IT staff to keep track of everything. At some point, there’s too much to manage.

As this happens, companies will need to start automating much of their cybersecurity efforts.

Automation is helpful no matter which way you look at it. While a person can be an expert, it doesn’t mean they won’t make mistakes. When you add automation and smart AI to the process, it makes detecting potential threats easier.

This also frees up the time of security professionals. Instead of spending their day looking for threats, they can spend it responding to them.

7. Cryptomining

Have you ever heard of Bitcoin? It’s the decentralized digital coin that was supposed to replace currency.

While it hasn’t done that yet, it has spun off other digital currencies that are worth real money.

You can get these currencies by mining on your computer. It takes a lot of CPU or GPU power to make money doing this.

Some people have started to make use of malware to put these cryptocurrency miners on computers. These miners run in the background and earn money for the person who deployed the malware.

Not only does this slow a computer down, but it also wears out computer hardware.

Expect this to continue into 2019 as more companies create more cryptocurrencies.

8. More Ransomware Attacks

Have you ever had the experience of all your files being renamed and locked with a popup? If so, you’ve experienced ransomware.

Ransomware is becoming a widespread attack against companies and governments. It relies on people being trusting and opening files they shouldn’t.

This attack recently happened with the Georgia court system.

When this attack happens to you, the attacker will want you to send a cryptocurrency payment to an anonymous address. If you do, they will give you the password to unlock your files.

As this trend continues, companies will be planning more backups to restore their files when this happens.

Take These Cybersecurity Trends Seriously

It’s hard to get away from using the internet in everyday life.

Unfortunately, this opens you up to security threats. Make sure to follow cybersecurity trends, so you know what dangers you need to look out for and how you can protect yourself.

Are you interested in more technology news? Head over to our blog to see what you need to know.