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( votes)Attackers have realized that businesses and governments have more valuable information to target, more money for ransom payments and poor cyber hygiene, which indicates 2020 will see an escalation in targeted enterprise ransomware.
Cybersecurity threat
Cybersecurity threat- As 2019 is coming to an end and we look forward to the new year, one thing you can be sure to see is a barrage of cybersecurity predictions ranging from more “real” predictions to “finger in the sky” guesses that will make for interesting reading, even if they never come true. As you know, preparation in cybersecurity is critical. The following predictions focus on the issues that we are likely to see in 2020, with an emphasis on which attack vectors are most likely to be exploited and more importantly, what you can do about it.
Here are 5 cyber security threat predictions to consider for 2020:
Targeted enterprise ransomware escalates. Although enterprise ransomware is not new, attacks that were once the domain of consumers whilst on decline in number have spawned new monetization schemes. As such, ransomware will continue to be a huge issue in 2020. Attackers have realized that business and governments have more valuable information to target, more money for ransom payments and poor cyber hygiene, which indicates 2020 will see an escalation in targeted enterprise ransomware. 2019 saw over 70 state and local governments crippled with ransomware.
The Ryuk ransomware alone impacted hundreds of schools, and attackers globally have seen the level of damage they can inflict and the ransom payments to recover are massive! Over 2019, multiple U.S. organizations reported ransomware payments ranging in the hundreds of thousands to nearly half of a million dollars for various payments made to cyber criminals. As ransom requests are getting bigger and attackers globally are watching, cyber criminals have moved away from the spray and pray method to become more globally organized from an operations standpoint, securing larger and larger payouts.
SMB threats to increase in 2020. The old adage in cybersecurity, “old vulnerabilities cause big damage” will ring true in 2020. Attackers will look to increase development of exploits that take advantage of the vulnerability in Microsoft‘s Server Message Block (SMB) protocol and they will do it with great success. Ransomware such as Ryuk allows an attack on a single infected device to quickly spread throughout an organization. This continues to indicate that the family of exploits used in the ransomware attacks of 2017 will continue to devastate the millions of still unpatched endpoints.
