WHAT WILL CYBERSECURITY LOOK LIKE IN 2017?

Here are some areas of high risk in 2017. Will they see improvements in 2017?

Away with Simple Passwords

How many of your users have simple, common or outdated passwords? The recent DDoS attack that wreaked havoc on a huge portion of the internet on Oct. 21 was partly enabled by unchanged default passwords which hackers were able to exploit. In 2017, better password management services will gain traction as businesses understand how vulnerable they are.

Mobile – an increasingly popular point of entry

A Ponemon Institute report found that for an enterprise, the economic risk of mobile data breaches can be as high as $26.4 million and 67 percent of organizations surveyed reported having had a data breach as a result of employees using their mobile devices to access the company’s sensitive and confidential information. People and their mobile devices are now moving around way too much for current cybersecurity strategies to be effective. Combine this with the sentiment that many users feel they can protect their privacy while having secure, uninterrupted access to business and personal services, and you have a vulnerable soft spot for hackers.

Protect the privileged users

Hackers want high-level access, which they get through targeting the credentials of privileged users like IT professionals, CEOs and vendors. And while organizations have applied security to the systems, applications and data that are most critical to their business, these preventative measures simply aren’t enough anymore. In 2017, savvy organizations will need to get serious about protecting not just systems, but privileged users by identifying them, monitoring their access and closing off access to what they don’t need. Addressing this issue, will involve organizations willing to provide extensive education and training on the potential dangers involved, especially in an increasingly mobile workforce.

Discovery isn’t getting easier

Nothing indicates that ‘dwell time,’ or the interval between a successful attack and its discovery by the victim, will see any improvement in 2017. In some extreme cases, ‘dwell times’ can reach as high as two years and can cost a company millions per breach.

Source: http://www.cio.com/article/3145879/hiring/2017-security-predictions.html