As cyber attackers continue to become more sophisticated, the changing threat landscape continues to bring new challenges to companies. The never-ending “cat and mouse” game between cyber criminals and security practitioners means companies have to be on high alert 24/7. The ongoing expansion of attack surfaces makes it all the more difficult.
With the cyber threat environment in a state of constant flux, it’s helpful to ask: “Are my customers’ cybersecurity solutions and strategies still aligned as closely as they should be with key trends?” A look at some of the threats expected to become more prominent as we get deeper into 2016 is a good place to start.
The New Threats for 2016
In the next four years, 20 billion devices are estimated to become connected. As these devices become a more appealing target for hackers, cybersecurity teams will be faced with new challenges, including:
- Machine-to-machine attacks: Last year, Fortinet’s list of top 10 threats showed, for the first time, a rise in attacks on IoT devices. As the IoT continues to grow and evolve, the devices — many of which are poorly secured — will increase their appeal to hackers. This will lead to more attacks that exploit flaws in machine-to-machine communication protocols.
- “Headless worms” targeting devices: Worms that target embedded devices such as home routers can be managed and removed through their user interfaces. This is more difficult with IoT devices, which cyber criminals exploit with threats that automatically propagate from device to device through trusted communication protocols. It only takes a small amount of code to infect one of these “headless devices.”
- Cloud jailbreaking: With the cloud and virtualization being another fast-growing area, hackers are shifting their focus to a new way of breaching sensitive data. Attackers are finding ways to break out of hypervisors that are designed to monitor the code in the end-user environment. They are also likely to exploit mobile devices by creating malware to remotely access remote environments.
- Ghostware: The criminal justice system is adapting to the new field of cyber attacks — but cyber criminals aren’t missing a beat in their efforts to up the ante. As investigators and prosecutors ratchet up pressure on hackers, new malware will be developed that not only launches an attack, but also erases all traces of malicious activity —making it difficult to identify the attackers.
- Two-faced malware: Malware will continue to evolve to avoid detection of defenses such as security sandboxes. This evolution will include new variants of two-faced malware, which executes a task to avoid detection before it moves on to its malicious task.
The More You Know, The Better
The more you know about existing and emerging threats, the better resource you’ll be for your customers. As a partner of global network-security leader Fortinet, Fine Tec offers a broad range of solutions and resources that can help your customers stay protected in today’s complex security environment.