Last year, we saw some major cyber breaches affect millions of Americans (remember the June 2015 hack of the federal Office of Personal Management that impacted over 20 million Americans?). Unfortunately, cyber-attacks do not seem like they are going to be slowing down any time soon. According to the cybersecurity experts in the Raytheon|Websense 2016 Security Predictions Report (here), we will see a spike in these kinds of cyber breaches in 2016 – bad news for individuals and business owners alike. So what do the experts predict as the primary concerns for businesses? They are calling for a wide variety of breaches and developments on the cybersecurity landscape, including:
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Data Theft Prevention will dramatically increase in mainstream companies. Companies with an eye on the bottom line will begin to no longer strive for "perfect protection," but to highly prioritize the rapid detection of existing and future theft and to make every effort to minimize their window of compromise by remediating not only the threat, but also the root cause.
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New top level domains will make every company's customers prime targets for phishing. Now that companies can customize their top level domains (beyond the simple .com, .gov, or .edu), fake sites will be used in active spam and other malicious campaigns to lure consumers and steal their data. Knowing who is using your company's name online is more important than ever.
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Cyber insurance will evolve. In 2015, cyber insurance premiums spiked. Moving forward, insurance carriers are expected to fine tune their baseline requirements. This means sending in auditors to review cybersecurity systems before issuing any policies. Companies will have to prove they have all reasonable protections in place and are taking all necessary steps prior to securing cyber coverage.
In December, I wrote about the importance of preparing for a cyber-attack (here), and if these predictions prove to be correct, it will be more important than ever to ensure your company is prepared for a cyber breach. That means strengthening your protections and policies now to combat the growing risk of cyber threats in the future.
