{"id":31466,"date":"2020-01-16T14:22:44","date_gmt":"2020-01-16T14:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/?p=31466"},"modified":"2020-01-17T09:43:37","modified_gmt":"2020-01-17T09:43:37","slug":"mimecast-expert-gives-his-cybersecurity-trends-predictions-for-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/2020\/01\/16\/mimecast-expert-gives-his-cybersecurity-trends-predictions-for-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Mimecast expert gives his cybersecurity trends predictions for 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The realities of the negative impact of modern cyber threats arguably hit home for South Africans in 2019 more than any other year in memory. Brian Pinnock, cybersecurity expert at Mimecast, reviews the past year and gives his cybersecurity trends predictions for 2020.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The country fell victim to several high-profile breaches, including a successful ransomware attack on City Power\u2019s systems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in\nJuly this year, South Africa experienced the single longest cyberattack seen\nglobally by the Mimecast Threat Centre, with an unknown attacker launching a\nwide-ranging campaign on our financial services sector over an eight-day\nperiod.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will 2020 hold more of the same,\nor will new \u2013 and greater \u2013 risks emerge? Based on our work helping companies\naround the world build greater cyber resilience, we expect to see the following\nplay out in the world of cybersecurity in the year ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving from perimeter to\npervasive email security<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The world\u2019s number one business\ncommunication tool is also the most popular channel for attack by\ncybercriminals. And while email itself has remained fundamentally unchanged\nover the past 10 or 20 years, email security has changed significantly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nOctober, our CEO, Peter Bauer, outlined how organisations have to move from\nperimeter email security to pervasive email security. Email perimeter security\nis focused on keeping data and users safe by protecting them against phishing,\nmalware, impersonation attacks and data loss. Additional measures are in place\nto limit the impact of a compromised user on the broader network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, as Peter points out,\norganisations now have to consider threats that abuse trust outside of their\nown environments and protect their brands and domains from being spoofed or\nhijacked by crooks who defraud their customers and partners. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nrequires organisations to take an offensive approach to cybersecurity and leverage\nsolutions that given them visibility outside of their purview. This enables\nthem to hunt for \u2013 and take action against \u2013 threats where attackers present\nthemselves fraudulently to customers using deception or impersonation. We\nbelieve 2020 is going to be the year where this becomes a vital component of\nany cyber resilience strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A race for security\nmaturity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A significant amount of the\ncyberattacks launched on businesses and consumers are fairly simple and\none-dimensional, but they are effective because so many organisations still\nhave limited security maturity. This is unlikely to change in 2020. However,\neven in organisations with advanced security controls, most of those controls\nwork independently of each other, leaving many vulnerable to more complex\nattacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We expect to see an escalation in\ncomplex attacks using multiple attack vectors that span several security\ncontrols \u2013 for example email security and web security. Attackers will take\nadvantage of limited threat sharing, low levels of automated orchestration and\na lack of bilateral threat sharing between different security controls to pry\nopen the defences of organisations with relatively mature cybersecurity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5G widens scope for\ncyberattacks<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the long-awaited spectrum\nallocation in progress, SA\u2019s mobile operators are keenly awaiting rollout of\nnext-generation 5G infrastructure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5G is\nwidely expected to become a foundational element of how people consume media\nand is a cornerstone of so-called smart cities. However, it also provides\ncybercriminals with a welcome tool to gain access to higher volumes of valuable\ndata. There will likely be an increase in the size and frequency of Distributed\nDenial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, similar to the ones many of our local\nInternet Service Providers have experienced in recent months. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s also\nnot unthinkable that we\u2019ll see a vast IoT botnet, comprised of a million\ndevices, launch the biggest attack we\u2019ve yet seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blurring the lines<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybercriminals have become very\nsmart. Instead of targeting victims with a single email containing a malicious\nURL or attachment, they now target users on social media, email and directly on\ntheir mobile device via SMS (SMishing) or voice (vishing). By constantly\ninundating users with sophisticated attacks, cybercriminals make it\nincreasingly difficult to distinguish what\u2019s real and what\u2019s fake, leaving many\nvulnerable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Educating the vulnerable<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unsurprisingly, the rising\nsophistication of cyberattacks has left many vulnerable to exploitation,\nespecially less digitally literate groups such as older generations. Expect to\nsee renewed focus on educating consumers about safe online habits and to help\nthem identify and avoid potentially risky behaviour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nwon\u2019t be limited to banks and other service providers educating their\ncustomers. There will likely be increased investment in awareness training\nwithin organisations, to equip employees with the skills and knowledge to\nprevent risky behaviour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is\nessential, considering the risks to businesses of malicious files moving from\none infected user to the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI vs AI<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year will see Artificial Intelligence\nbeing put to broad use \u2013 for good and for bad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Organisations\nwill start using advanced AI to help uncover trends and insights in their\nalerts, and to better orchestrate and refine their overall security landscape. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They will\nneed to closely monitor their AI tool\u2019s effectiveness and accuracy and refine\nas needed. At the same time, attackers will use AI to do reconnaissance of\ntarget networks, identify vulnerabilities and develop better malware.\nConsidering the amount of publicly available information on, for example,\nsocial media, attackers are also likely to use AI to find information that\ncould be used for targeted phishing attacks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The realities of the negative impact of modern cyber threats arguably hit home for South Africans in 2019 more than any other year in memory. Brian Pinnock, cybersecurity expert at Mimecast, reviews the past year and gives his cybersecurity trends predictions for 2020. The country fell victim to several high-profile breaches, including a successful ransomware […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":31474,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4950,5,6,13,262],"tags":[871,496,386,12308,7720,153,449,388,1053,563,390,484,12309,5882,277,1618,2033,453,8075],"class_list":["post-31466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-enterprise-security","category-insights","category-top-stories","category-used","tag-5g","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-brian-pinnock","tag-city-power","tag-cyber-threats","tag-cybercriminals","tag-cybersecurity","tag-ddos","tag-distributed-denial-of-service","tag-iot","tag-mimecast","tag-mimecast-threat-centre","tag-peter-bauer","tag-ransomware","tag-smishing","tag-sms","tag-south-africa","tag-vishing"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31466"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31479,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31466\/revisions\/31479"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}