Top 5 Cyber Security Predictions for 2015 Revealed | Cyber Breaches & Data Loss

Posted by Loraine Daly on Wed, Jan 7th, 2015

Unfortunately, 2014 was another challenging year for IT  security professionals casting a dark shadow on cyber security predictions for 2015. In January everyone was still reeling from the Target breach, but as 2014 dawned there were immediately breaches announced that--like Target--were so large the figures were difficult to comprehend. P. F. Chang’s and Neiman Marcus had been victimized by hackers in 2013 too, though this wasn’t revealed until 2014. Then there was the roll call of new breaches: Home Depot, and Michael’s, and JP Morgan … and each of these breaches compromised the personal information of millions of customers. And these were just the huge hack jobs—there were many, many smaller breaches, such as the attack on the US Postal Service that compromised the data of 800,000 employees.

Things are  hotting up on the international hacking front, a fact underlined by the most recent Sony data breach.  Following the data breach carried out by a group called Guardians of Peace, the movie “The Interview,” scheduled for Christmas release was pulled. This was due to pressure from various sources including political. Many sources believe the attack may have been a state-sponsored attack provoked by the content of the  film  which involves the death of a parodied version of Kim Jong-Un, the supreme leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

International cyber hacking will be in the news again in 2015. It’s been suspected for years that the next battleground between nations would be cyberspace, and it seems very likely that international incidents are going to escalate. There are issues that the cyber community hasn’t thoroughly addressed—how do you deal with malware when a government is the source?

As an IT professional, you need to know what threats you’ll face in 2015 and how to defend against them. Based on analysis from cyber attacks in 2014, here are the top network security threats we believe you will face in 2015.

1. It’s  alarming—but true. There are going to be more massive, costly, and frightening cyber breaches in 2015. Cyber breaches don’t just destroy businesses and potentially harm their customers; they’re damaging to the economic climate in general, and businesses need to be aware of what they can to do to protect themselves.
2. Health and university data will continue to appeal to cyber criminals. Medical records and students records are treasure troves of valuable information, and universities and hospitals all too often have inadequate protection. There have been some large university data breaches recently; there will probably be more in the immediate future.
3. The simple things, particularly email, will continue to be the most vulnerable points in most businesses. A common human error such as clicking on that suspicious link in an email is still one of the best ways for cyber criminals to gain access to the data they want.
4. Commonly used software will be found to have critical flaws that cyber criminals can exploit. Heartbleed and Shellshock were—well—shocking, but how likely is it that they are the only potentially dangerous vulnerabilities? These vulnerabilities really can lead to devastating damage. Heartbleed was reportedly used in one of the worst hacks of 2014, the Community Health Systems attack.

It’s going to be more important than ever in 2015 to keep all network security solutions  up to date, ensuring robust protection is in place and optimized, and to have a company  security practices in place that are continually updated and refined in order to stay ahead of targeted attacks.