For the fourth year in a row, the LogRhythm Labs team came together to answer a question that’s on everyone’s mind this time of year: what is going to happen in cybersecurity next year? A few weeks ago, we revisited our 2018 cybersecurity predictions to kick start our prediction engines. It’s a practice we encourage everyone in the industry to go through, no matter what your role.
By reviewing the previous 12 months’ security advances, threats, and trends — and thinking about how they may influence the next 12 months — you get into the practice of predicting what the next big threat might be and how to prepare for it. Attackers are constantly thinking about new possibilities, and you should be too.
And what does our track record look like when it comes to our predictions? We’ve been right on the money in a number of cases, such as when we predicted that 2018 would see a new record for the largest breach settlement or when we noted we would see an overt cyberattack from a nation-state in our 2017 predictions.
Naturally, there have been some misses in our predictions. While we expected the United States to introduce new legislation inspired by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) at the federal level, it was individual states that did so. And although the internet didn’t shut down for 24 hours in 2017 as predicted, we did see large parts of core internet infrastructure collapse.
But no matter what happens with our predictions, there’s always one thing we can count on: the cybersecurity industry is going to be busy. 2018 started off with a bang due to the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, and unfortunately, hacks and breaches occurred consistently for the rest of the year. So far, there have been over 3,600 attacks exposing about 3.6 million records.
So without further ado, let’s get to our predictions for 2019. There are eight key developments we expect to see in the year ahead, including China manipulating the market to turn trade wars in its favor and cloud-based ransomware compromising a major corporation’s infrastructure. Why do we think this will happen? Download the infographic for the full list of predictions and the rationale behind them. And after you read them, let us know in the comments below: what are your cybersecurity predictions for the year ahead?
