Cybercriminals will refine their attack methods. This has been the underlying theme throughout our cybersecurity forecast series.
A few years ago, cyberattacks were automated and usually carried out by amateurs or script kiddies looking to hit a wide range of businesses and individuals. However, attacks in 2017 will increasingly be conducted by calculated cybercriminals bent on compromising and stealing information from a single target.
Circumventing detection
As cybersecurity solutions continue to get better at identifying threats, we predict that hackers will adjust their tools, tactics, and procedures to evade detection.
Cybercriminals, for instance, exclusively used .bin or .exe extensions to execute malware attacks until developments in antivirus software and firewalls forced them to diversify. Today, hackers use scripts and batch files to write and perform malware attacks with minimal resistance.
As 2017 unfolds, we believe that threat actors will meticulously study advanced cybersecurity solutions to uncover and exploit zero-day vulnerabilities. Hackers will also mask malicious code and blend it with harmless programs so that they can even avoid sandbox detection -- a technology that determines whether a file is malicious by running it in a controlled, virtualized environment.
To increase infiltration rates, cybercriminals will likely resort to social engineering to fool employees into downloading malware-ridden files or leaking company secrets and login credentials.
What should businesses do?
With even more ways to infiltrate and attack computer systems, organizations must be able to not only identify existing network vulnerabilities and recognize new variants of known threats, but also prepare for completely unknown threats.
The first two challenges will be relatively easy to meet. Hiring security professionals to conduct vulnerability assessments and penetration tests will immediately reveal network flaws. Cybersecurity solutions like heuristic antivirus software, web gateway solutions, vulnerability shielding, firewalls, and intrusion prevention systems can be used to protect against new malware strains.
Defending against future threats, on the other hand, is more challenging. To ensure your systems keep running after a breach, you need proactive behavior and integrity monitoring technology as well as sandboxing and a thorough disaster recovery plan.
Antivirus software and firewalls just won’t cut it in 2017. To truly reinforce your defenses, you need a multi-layered strategy that protects against malware and nullifies ransomware, targeted attack campaigns, IoT denial-of-service attacks, and all the rest. If you want total protection for your business, contact Atlanta’s leading managed IT services team at www.intelligis.com.
We’ve made it! It was fun sharing our 2017 cybersecurity forecast, and it would not be possible without our security partner, Trend Micro. To review all eight predictions in detail, make sure to read Trend Micro’s analysis for a more comprehensive take on cybersecurity in 2017.
