Next Cyber Security Threats will Include Machine Learning and More Malicious Ransomware

What do cybercriminals have in store for businesses in 2018? A new report from McAfee aims to identify some of the trends and potential cybersecurity threats facing businesses in the new year.

The McAfee Labs 2018 Threats Predictions report includes predictions related to a few key trends, including cryptocurrencies, serverless apps and machine learning.

McAfee Labs 2018 Threats Predictions Report

The report goes into more detail for each prediction. For example, the prediction about machine learning includes:

“Machine learning can process massive quantities of data and perform operations at great scale to detect and correct known vulnerabilities, suspicious behavior, and zero-day attacks. But adversaries will certainly employ machine learning themselves to support their attacks, learning from defensive responses, seeking to disrupt detection models, and exploiting newly discovered vulnerabilities faster than defenders can patch them.”

Additionally, McAfee foresees a decline in ransomware use, but an increase in the maliciousness of those attacks when they are used, as well as a loss of privacy for businesses looking to collect personal information from consumers, among other trends.

Overall, the predictions seem to fall in line with a trend that McAfee has identified as a cycle of disruption between attackers and defenders, with both sides constantly trying to outwit the other. For that reason, early adoption of the latest cyber security tools is paramount when protecting your business’s data. McAfee recently released a white paper detailing the key cyber security trends.

It may be impossible to anticipate every potential threat. But if you can identify some key trends and areas of potential opportunity for cyber attacks, you could take some positive steps toward shoring up your cybersecurity efforts.

Vincent Weafer, Vice President of McAfee Labs said in an email to Small Business Trends, “The 2018 predictions cover security threats and privacy risks from your child’s digital backpack, connected devices in our homes and businesses, up to cyber sabotage at large organizations. It is especially relevant when your business becomes part of the digital supply chain for larger organizations, or are custodians of the private data for those families. Technology is evolving at a rapid pace, and attackers will take advantage of this such as using machine learning to target new victims, evade basic protections and gather our private data across traditional PC’s and connected devices. We recommend that every business takes a ‘security timeout’ to identify their own key risk factors for theft and loss of service, and then update their security practices and tools to ensure they are protected against these evolving attacks.”

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This article, "Next Cyber Security Threats will Include Machine Learning and More Malicious Ransomware" was first published on Small Business Trends