Cybersecurity Report: Trends 2020 - the landscape of threats and security measures

 

2019 brought us plenty of unprecedented attacks, and ransomware, considered by businesses to be the greatest threat, generated global losses of $11.5 billion. Rampant cybercrime, dynamic data growth and legal regulations drove increased investment in public cloud, DLP, multi-factor authentication and backup solutions.

Xopero Software S.A., in cooperation with experts from companies such as Orange, Equinix, Oracle, Sysclay, ComCERT, TestArmy, Tauron and Oktawave, presents the Cybersecurity Report: Trends 2020. Another, even more insightful edition of the only report in Poland devoted to new directions in the IT security industry, under the patronage of the SysOps/DevOps administrators group.

Summary of 2019 - criminals do not bypass Poland

 

Ransomware attacks in 2019

Ransomware attacks, system vulnerabilities and data leaks no longer surprise us. However, 2019 showed us several unprecedented ones, such as the spreading attacks on systems that until now were considered impossible to crack. This refers, for example, to Apple's iOS. The last weeks of the year also showed us that criminals do not bypass Poland - the victims of high-profile ransomware attacks included municipal offices and the Budzik children's clinic.

The announced un-clouding

 

In 2019, about 52% of Polish enterprises used the cloud or had it in their plans. Globally, we can speak of as many as 86% of enterprises that have already moved their data to it. The concerns that cloud computing used to raise are gradually diminishing. Today, 26% of surveyed IT specialists consider security issues to be a serious challenge for the use of cloud services. For comparison - in 2015 this figure was 45%.

An undeniable trend will be the development of multi-cloud practices.

It refers to the use of multiple heterogeneous cloud service providers. For the security industry, this means the need to create tools for enterprises that enable the protection of data stored in multiple clouds, their easy migration and recovery.

From year to year we observe growing interest in cloud computing in the SME and corporate segment. The adoption statistics of multi-cloud practices are also increasing - companies use an average of 5 cloud solutions. Both the positive experiences of enterprises and examples of successful implementations of the concept of a “state in the cloud” will contribute to its popularization also in the public sector, and thankfully so, because the IT infrastructure in many public organizations leaves much to be desired. Cloud easily solves this problem.- says Paweł Sarol, Cloud Backup Business Development Manager at Xopero Software.

Ransomware in form

 

Ransomware undeniably remains one of the most costly threats to business. In 2019 alone, it generated global losses of $11.5 billion. The frequency of attacks is also growing. At the beginning of 2016, it struck every 2 minutes. A year ago we were talking about 14 seconds, and by 2021 this time will shrink to 11 seconds!

Targeted attacks, a focus on businesses and state organizations, leakware, ransomware-as-a-service and the development of encryption attacks on mobile devices are the most serious aspects that we need to prepare for in 2020.

Security as standard

 

The average cost of a single data breach last year was $3.92 million. On average, more than 25,000 records leaked - each worth about $150. No wonder that DLP (Data Loss Prevention) - technology that prevents data loss and helps identify people who should not have access to it - is rapidly entering the security mainstream.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA/2FA) is also becoming standard. Software tokens (e.g. apps) and biometrics are gaining popularity here - they are becoming cheaper and easier to implement. Legal regulations are also driving the development of this trend - an example is the EU Payment Services Directive (PSD2), which, upon entering into force on 14 September 2019, introduced the requirement of strong authentication when logging into payment services.

Research by Xopero Software shows that entrepreneurs fear ransomware attacks the most (79.8%), followed by failure, loss or theft of hardware (46.8%), file damage (41.5%), malware attacks (37.2%) and threats using social engineering techniques (35.1%). How can they protect themselves? By investing in backup and disaster recovery solutions that, in the event of a failure, will allow them to almost immediately restore access to critical services and applications and avoid downtime. Because that can cost them a lot. It is assumed that globally the average cost of downtime is as much as $1.42 million. No wonder that statistically 93% of companies without disaster recovery go out of business within a year after losing data...

A new, better world

 

The challenge for the IT security industry is to create a secure Internet of Things. IoT has opened the door to a completely new world not only for its users, but also for criminals. And since we are already talking about a new world, the report could not miss topics about blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning and Quantum Computing. Science fiction? Not necessarily. The rapid development of these technologies means that they increasingly influence our approach to modern cybersecurity.

Good advice

 

In addition to industry forecasts, the report contains a number of recommendations for business prepared by experts from companies such as Orange, Xopero, Equinix, Sysclay, Oracle and Oktawave. Their analysis and implementation will allow companies not only to build an advantage and function effectively in cyberspace, but may also determine their further existence in 2020.

The report is available for free download here.

Summary

The “Cybersecurity: Trends 2020” report prepared by Xopero Software with experts from among others Orange, Equinix and Oracle shows that ransomware remains the most costly threat – in 2019 it brought global losses of $11.5 billion, and attacks are becoming more frequent. Cloud adoption is growing – 52% of Polish companies already use it or plan to, and specialists are increasingly less afraid of cloud computing. DLP and multi-factor authentication are becoming standard, and the average cost of a data breach reaches $3.92 million. The article also emphasizes the importance of backup and disaster recovery – 93% of companies without these solutions go out of business within a year after losing data.