New research suggests that the cost of data breaches will increase to $2.1 trillion globally by 2019, almost four times the estimated cost of breaches in 2015.
The research from Juniper ‘The Future of Cybercrime & Security: Financial & Corporate Threats & Mitigation‘, found that the majority of these breaches will come from existing IT and network infrastructure. While new threats targeting mobile devices and the IoT (Internet of Things) are being reported at an increasing rate, the number of infected devices is minimal in comparison to more traditional computing devices.
The report also suggested that hacktivism has become more successful due to the professionalism of cybercrime, with the emergence of cybercrime products (i.e. sale of malware creation software) over the past year. This has led to the decline in casual activist hacks and has made the attacks less prolific. In future, Juniper expects fewer attacks overall, but more successful ones.
‘Currently, we aren’t seeing much dangerous mobile or IoT malware because it’s not profitable’, noted report author James Moar. ‘The kind of threats we will see on these devices will be either ransomware, with consumers’ devices locked down until they pay the hackers to use their devices, or as part of botnets, where processing power is harnessed as part of a more lucrative hack. With the absence of a direct payout from IoT hacks, there is little motive for criminals to develop the required tools.’
Other findings from the report include the average cost of a data breach in 2020 will exceed $150 million by 2020, as more business infrastructure gets connected.
