Cyber Attacks are the Norm

By Babur Nawaz Khan, Product Marketing, A10 Networks

As we 2019, its time to have a look at the year 2020 and what it would have in store for enterprises.

Since we are in the business of securing our enterprise customers’ infrastructures, we keep a close eye on how the security and encryption landscape is changing so we can help our customers to stay one step ahead.

In 2019, ransomware made a comeback, worldwide mobile operators made aggressive strides in the transformation to 5G, and GDPR achieved its first full year of implementation and the industry saw some of the largest fines ever given for massive data breaches experienced by enterprises.

2020 will no doubt continue to bring a host of the not new, like the continued rash of DDoS attacks on government entities and cloud and gaming services, to the new and emerging. Below are just a few of the trends we see coming next year.

Ransomware will increase globally through 2020
Ransomware attacks are gaining widespread popularity because they can now be launched even against smaller players. Even a small amount of data can be used to hold an entire organisation, city or even country for ransom. The trend of attacks levied against North American cities and city governments will only continue to grow.

We will see at least three new strains of ransomware types introduced:

• Modular or multi-leveled/layered ransomware and malware attacks will become the norm as this evasion technique becomes more prevalent. Modular attacks use multiple trojans and viruses to start the attack before the actual malware or ransomware is eventually downloaded and launched 
• 70% of all malware attacks will use encryption to evade security measures (encrypted malware attacks)

To no surprise, the cyber security skills gap will keep on widening. As a result, security teams will struggle with creating fool-proof policies and leveraging the full potential of their security investments

Slow Adoption of new Encryption Standards

Although TLS 1.3 was ratified by the Internet Engineering Taskforce in August of 2018, we won’t see widespread or mainstream adoption: less than 10% of websites worldwide will start using TLS 1.3. TLS 1.2 will remain relevant, and therefore will remain the leading TLS version in use globally since it has not been compromised yet, it supports PFS, and the industry is generally slow when it comes to adopting new standards. Conversely, Elliptical-curve cryptology (ECC) ciphers will see more than 80% adoption as older ciphers, such as RSA ciphers, are disappearing.

Decryption: It’s not a Choice Any Longer

TLS decryption will become mainstream as more attacks leverage encryption for infection and data breaches. Since decryption remains a compute-intensive process, firewall performance degradation will remain higher than 50% and most enterprises will continue to overpay for SSL decryption due to lack of skills within the security teams. To mitigate firewall performance challenges and lack of skilled staff, enterprises will have to adopt dedicated decryption solutions as a more efficient option as next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) continue to polish their on-board decryption capabilities

Cyber attacks are indeed the new normal. Each year brings new security threats, data breaches and operational challenges, ensuing that businesses, governments and consumers have to always be on their toes. 2020 won’t be any different, particularly with the transformation to 5G mobile networks and the dramatic rise in IoT, by both consumers and businesses. The potential for massive and widespread cyber threats expands exponentially.

Let’s hope that organisations, as well as security vendors, focus on better understanding the security needs of the industry, and invest in solutions and policies that would give them a better chance at defending against the ever-evolving cyber threat landscape.