IT security 2019: interim assessment from five perspectives

As a result of cyberattacks, ransomware and data breaches, from January to April 2019, approximately 5.9 billion Data records exposed. Almost every private user now receives blackmail emails from cybercriminals because they are in possession of their password or email address. Whether healthcare, automotive, public sector, retail or IT sector, companies in every industry are also under attack today. Both ransomware and cyber insurance grew significantly. According to Ponemon the global average cost of a data breach in 2018 was $3.86 million - an increase of 6.4 percent from the previous year. The average time to detect a data breach is more than 100 days. But getting it under control within a month saves a lot of money.

Cloud computing

According to the RightScale 2019 State of the Cloud Survey 84 percent of companies have a multi-cloud strategy. The acceptance of public clouds is growing steadily, with 91 percent currently in use. Compared to 2018, companies plan to spend 24 percent more money on them this year. The number of clouds used per company has risen from three to five. This means that it is no longer a question of whether to use the cloud, but only of management and costs. But: The cloud still needs a data center. The industry is growing as more and more data is transferred there.

Domain Name System (DNS)

DNS is one of the most important - and vulnerable - components of the Internet. EfficientIP has, in cooperation with IDC, developed the Global DNS Threat Report 2019 published. Last year, DNS attacks increased by 34 percent. 82 percent of companies were exposed to such an attack - with an average of nine DNS attacks per company. 63 percent recorded application failures due to the attack and 27 percent even lost business. Costs from attacks on apps increased by 49 percent and the $1 million mark in damage per attack was exceeded. The most common methods include phishing (47%), malware-based attacks (39%), and DDoS (30%).

Mobile devices

Mobility opens up many opportunities for companies, but also leads to challenges. The market for BYOD is used until 2022 to $367 billion are on the rise. Soon, employees will even go to the office wearing networked clothing. 5G, AR, mobile payments, APIs, the rise of instant or on-demand apps, and hopefully a greater Focus on safety - all this plays an important role here.

Bots

About half of all Internet traffic has to do with bots. There are good bots, so to speak, such as search engines, crawlers, or chats - but there are also bad guys that perform DDoS attacks, account theft, ad fraud, brute force attacks, or other outrages. These can impact business data, cost money, cause outages, generate unwanted traffic or otherwise disrupt business. That's why companies should develop a bot management strategy.

Conclusion

In the area of IT security, there are many negative trends due to new and greater threats, but also positive developments in protective measures. Whether the glass is half full or half empty depends on one's perspective. But the second half of 2019 will also bring more surprises, uncertainties and solutions. Because the competition between cybercriminals and security experts will continue in the future.