Intel® Security today released its McAfee Labs Threats Predictions Report, which predicts key developments on the cyber threat landscape in 2016, and provides unique insights into the expected nature of that landscape through 2020, as well as the IT security industry’s likely response. Reflecting the informed opinions of 33 of Intel Security’s thought leaders, the report examines current trends in cybercrime and makes predictions about what the future may hold for organisations working to keep pace with business and technology opportunities, and the cybercriminals that target them.
“The best hockey players navigate within the ice rink, grapple with opposing players, take advantage of opportunities when available, and, critically, as Wayne Gretzky said, always skate to where the puck is going to be—not where it has been,” said Vincent Weafer, vice president of Intel Security’s McAfee Labs. “To address the business, technology, and threat landscape realities facing them, we must help organisations get to where they need to be, using technologies that will enable and not hinder their businesses, and understand what kinds of threats could be confronting them tomorrow, and far into the future.”
Among their predictions, Intel has said it expects to see attacks on all types of hardware and firmware continuing and the amount of tools available for this will expand over the next year. The reason for this is that operating systems and software is hardening to a lot of forms of attack.
They also predicted a rise in the use of ransomware as cybercrime becomes more widely pursued. Essentially, more people are seeing it as a viable tool for making money, so more people will use it – perhaps not all of them will be sophisticated hackers, however since ransomware can be purchased on the darkweb, it is possible that less cyber-savvy hackers will still be able to distribute and utilise ransomware.
A third predication was the increase in sharing threat intelligence. Intel says it expects threat intelligence sharing among enterprises and security vendors will grow rapidly and mature. Legislative steps may be taken, making it possible for companies and governments to share threat intelligence with government. They predict development of best practices in this area will accelerate, metrics for success will emerge to quantify protection improvement, and threat intelligence cooperatives between industry vendors will expand.
McAfee Labs also predicts that the dark market for malware code and hacking services could enable cyberespionage malware used in public sector and corporate attacks to be used for financial intelligence-gathering and the manipulation of markets in favor of attackers.
For the full list of predictions from Intel, see the full report – the link to which is at the top of this post.
