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Cybersecurity and the Ransomware Wave: How to Keep Europe Safe
- Ransomware losses are projected to increase from $325 million in 2015 to $5 billion in 2017, with the unique number of ransomware families expected to continue rising following a 752% increase in 2016.
- The cybercrime economy will mature into a niche market offering specialized services, such as malware scanning subscriptions and live chat support for accessing 30 million emails per month, while criminals may shift to data extortion citing GDPR fines up to 4% of annual turnover.
- Adversaries will increasingly leverage cryptocurrencies to eliminate intermediaries and retain 100% of profits, alongside the use of machine learning to automate victim research and create highly personalized attack vectors.
- Autonomous cyber weaponry, including intelligent bots capable of exploiting vulnerabilities and deploying payloads with minimal human interaction, is expected to be deployed soon as the next iteration of malicious payload delivery.
- Attack vectors are predicted to expand to include smart technology, SCADA, ICS, and IoT devices, with criminals targeting unpatched industrial robots, smart TVs, and critical medical infrastructure like insulin pumps as defenders harden traditional endpoints.
- Autonomous vehicles are forecasted to become potential terrorist weapons due to connectivity vulnerabilities that could allow remote control of global fleets to target law enforcement or civilian infrastructure.
- Artificial intelligence and machine learning will be adopted by both defenders and attackers at equal speeds, perpetuating a cybersecurity arms race that includes the introduction of new vulnerabilities within security tools operating with high privilege levels.
- The human factor will remain a primary compromise vector, prompting future training initiatives to focus on "human sandboxing" to allow employees to make mistakes in controlled environments.
- Cyber insurance is currently considered immature regarding confidentiality and integrity claims, lacking objective metrics and standardized audits, while quantum computing is expected to eventually render public-private key-based encryption obsolete.
- Global prosecution of international cybercriminals is expected to remain ineffective due to a lack of global tracking levers, maintaining a perceived zero-risk environment for offenders.
- Law enforcement could potentially reduce the volume of ransomware attacks if they successfully trace attackers to create a perception of inevitable punishment, similar to a "barking dog" strategy.
- Rogue traders or employees may be recruited by criminals driven by the fraud triangle, while new security software and code layers are anticipated to introduce fresh vulnerabilities due to their high privilege levels.