Thursday 5 January 2017

Cyber Security Roundup 2016: The Year of the Big Data Hack

A decade ago I was walking into Boardrooms clutching newspaper clippings of half dozen data breaches which had occurred during the previous years, in a bid to warn of future threats and to persuade executives to increase their information security budgets. Those days are long gone, as most executives I encounter tend to be already worried about the cyber threat to their business, all reinforced by the mainstream media which today reports hacks most days.

"Big Data" is a recent marketing buzzword used to usher in the age of businesses utilising the vasts amount of data which they process and store for increasing efficiently and profit. The problem is much of this "Big Data" is our personal data, and there are cyber criminals also seeking to profit from it. So here we are in the era of "Big Data Hacks", which sums up 2016 quite well.

I have compiled a list of media headlines of data breaches in 2016 below, the volumes involved with these data theft hacks are truly mind–boggling. Yahoo on their own had 1.5 billion personal records stolen in two cyber attacks. It isn't necessary that stealing digital text data in such volumes is difficult, but have to wonder about what level of IT security was in place to protect such large volumes of personal data in the first place.

DDoS attacks continued to grow in strength in 2016, thanks to the explosion of the Internet of Things, with hackers creating huge DDoS botnets from insecure and rushed IoT devices, which frankly have no business of being sold and placed online with default passwords and basic software vulnerabilities.

2016 was also the year Ransomware made a huge comeback. The UK public sector seems particularly vulnerable to ransomware infections, with cyber criminals making millions by evolving various strains of ransomware and catching victims out with the age old infection techniques of phishing emails, malware infected websites and trojan software.

In 2017 we can expect to see more Big Data hacks and huge IoT fuelled DDoS attacks. Ransomware isn't going to go away either, however I am most concerned we'll see our first IoT attack which results in physical world damage and human harm in 2017.

Personal Data Theft and Data Breaches in 2016
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