As the year draws to a close, the cybersecurity analysts at Webroot and Carbonite pull out their crystal balls to make their predictions for the year ahead. 

Our experts predict many of the trends they’ve been tracking throughout the year—well-researched attacks, RDP compromise, and the importance of user education—will continue into the New Year. But they’ll be affected by new industry developments such as impending privacy regulations, AI-enabled attacks, and attacks targeting developing nations. 

Highly Targeted Ransomware Will Continue to Devastate Businesses

Unsurprisingly, our experts predict the strong trend toward highly targeted ransomware will bleed into 2020.  

“Highly targeted ransomware will likely continue,” predicts Webroot Software Management Manager Eric Klonowski. “Next year, we predict ransom-motivated attackers will more pointedly observe automatic backup solutions and make attempts to remove and alter the backup data or the task itself.” Klonowski said. 

High-effort, low-volume surveillance techniques are now favored by ransomware operators like the Bitpaymer Group, which has been known to customize ransomware only hours before deploying an attack, first tailoring it to observations gathered on their targets. 

We should expect actors like these to continue to gain access to networks from where they can observe financial transactions and valuable information before determining the most profitable way to strike at their intended targets. 

Phishing will likely also become more targeted as data collected from breaches is incorporated into phishing emails. Things like passwords and recent transactions can go a long way in convincing people an email is legit.—Grayson Milbourne, Security Intelligence Director, Webroot

Long-Awaited Privacy Legislation Will Finally Arrive in the U.S. 

We expect that privacy and security will continue to jockey for primacy of concern in the minds of U.S. citizens. California, which has long led the fight for more stringent data privacy for consumers, is set to enact a law in early 2020 that has often drawn comparisons to Europe’s GDPR. 

As noted by Tech Crunch, California’s new data privacy act, like GDPR, will extend to all organizations that do business with Californians, effectively making it the law of the land nationwide. But Webroot Product Marketing Director George Anderson predicts a groundswell of support among U.S. citizens for stricter data privacy regulations. 

“U.S. citizens will step up their demands for privacy in 2020,” he says. “Privacy legislation in the U.S., which has lagged behind other nations, will be a central issue.” 

But rather than settling for a new set of standards, Anderson wouldn’t be surprised if entirely new revenue models are explored. Models that rely less on selling personal data than, say, subscription fees or some other alternative. 

“I would expect an alternative paid for services that don’t abuse data will emerge, Anderson says. “The existing, untrusted purveyors of convenience will try to pivot, but ultimately lose out heavily. Legislation and technology are starting to converge due to so many abuses of privacy.”

“Adversarial attacks against AI-based security products will likely grow in scope and complexity, which would highlight the fact that  there are fundamentally two types of AI in cybersecurity: AI which acts like a smarter conventional signature and AI which is built into every facet of an intelligent, cloud-based platform capable of cross-referencing and defending itself against adversarial attacks.” —Joe Jaroch, Senior Director of Cybersecurity Strategy, Webroot

Small and Medium-Sized Businesses will Bear the Brunt of Cyberattacks

Findings regarding cybersecurity readiness among small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) continue to be grim. Despite commonly falling victim to data breaches and other attacks, an attitude still pervades that they are either too small to catch the eye of cybercriminals or that their data isn’t valuable enough to warrant an attack. 

In a study conducted by Webroot and 451 Research, 71 percent of SMBs admitted to experiencing a breach or attack within the previous 24 months that resulted in “operational disruption, reputational damage, significant financial losses or regulatory penalties.”

According to Webroot Security Analyst Tyler Moffitt, that trend is unlikely to abate. 

“We expect that SMBs will continue to be targets for cybercriminals because, just like the public, education, and healthcare sectors, they maintain the same vulnerable environment. They’re low budget, understaffed, and often under-educated on matters of cybersecurity.”

Findings from the 451 Research report confirm Moffitt’s suspicions. A full 36 percent of SMBs surveyed in that study reported that they had no full-time staff on hand dedicated to cybersecurity. 

“The SMBs typically targeted have under 50 employees, and it often falls to a lone IT admin or someone in finance or sales to shore up cybersecurity at the company,” Moffitt says. “Almost always it’s a person who wears many hats and doesn’t have much of a budget or expertise.”

It’s the easily overlooked yet easily exploited security gaps like an unsecured RDP that most worry Moffitt. Without dedicated cybersecurity consulting, these can easily be exploited, yet they are easy to fix.

 “Expect to see more attacks against less developed nations. Attacks like this don’t generate revenue, rather they are meant to disrupt and destroy” —Grayson Milbourne, Security Intelligence Director, Webroot

We Want to Hear Your 2020 Predictions

Are these the developments you expect to see to kick off the new decade? Have some other ideas? We want to hear what hacks, news stories, or trends in cybersecurity you anticipate in the New Year. You can read additional predictions from our staff for the year ahead, plus submit your own, on the Webroot Community. Click here to visit the Community and share your 2020 predictions.

Entrepreneur Jim Rohn once said, “Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.” I think anyone involved in running a business can relate to this statement, but it carries a particularly deep meaning to those of us who deal with cybersecurity.

When it comes to cyberattacks, even the most minor malware infection can create costly delays and downtime, and the damages from data loss or business disruption can be financially devastating. Dealing with the consequences of denial-of-service attacks, ransomware, and data breaches shouldn’t be an accepted part of your agenda. 

You need to protect your business first. That means having a strong lineup of cyber-defense tools that don’t just mitigate threats, but actually put time back in your day. The key to success is to stop threats before they stop you. One of the most important pieces of that puzzle is the tools you use, particularly to achieve automation.

Learn more about protecting your business first with ADR and other cyber-defense best practices by checking out our Lockdown Lessons podcast series.

What are EDR, MDR, and ADR, and what’s the difference?

I am the first to admit that the cybersecurity world throws around far too many acronyms, and the definitions are not abundantly clear. (I’m definitely guilty of this, myself.) So let’s break down some of the endpoint-related jargon you may have heard lately.

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)

Endpoint detection and response (EDR) technology gathers large volumes of data from endpoints and provides security analysts with large amounts of information to help detect and mitigate cyber threats. These solutions significantly improve endpoint visibility, threat remediation, and can even assist with threat hunting. But to take full advantage, a staff of trained security analysts are necessary––and with today’s skills gap, this model does not make sense for the majority of SMBs and MSPs.

Today, EDR is beginning to morph into “enterprise detection and response.” The endpoint telemetry data it produces forms part of a more holistic approach to network security. 

Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

In recent months, cloud-based security service providers have been leveraging EDR data and compensating for the cybersecurity skills gap through managed detection and response (MDR). 

Working around the clock, MDR acts as a security analyst by providing automated threat detection, response, and remediation. It protects the entire network––not just endpoints––and provides the time, commitment, and cybersecurity skills necessary to fully detect, mitigate and resolve issues. The unfortunate truth here is that, for many smaller businesses, MDR is just too expensive. They may need to explore different partnership models or leverage managed services from their vendors.

Automated Detection and Response (ADR)

For businesses and managed service providers without dedicated cybersecurity resources and an ample budget, automated detection and response (ADR) may be the perfect answer. When other solutions become overwhelmed by the vast quantity of incoming malware, ADR leverages AI and machine learning to not only stop threats, but also to proactively predict and prevent them. As a result, this type of solution can actually put time back in your day.

As the cybersecurity landscape evolves and the skills gap continues to grow, MSPs and SMBs must onboard solutions that automate their defenses and offer the missing cybersecurity intelligence that only ADR provides.

ADR: the Next-Gen Evolution of Cybersecurity

As you are probably aware, modern attacks continue to increase in complexity, become more targeted, and are often automated at scale. They can also move unpredictably and laterally, as we have seen with Island Hopping (i.e. the act of compromising one company by infiltrating its affiliates, partner network, and/or supply chain.)

I know that many of you experience challenges that can make your business or clients vulnerable to attack, including:

• Broad attack surfaces
• Limited security expertise
• Lax or inadequate access controls
• Data loss, email spam, and phishing vulnerabilities
• Insufficient understanding of compliance

The best way to combat these types of vulnerabilities is to leverage the power in prediction to stop attacks before they happen, and to quickly and automatically remediate threats that do get through. This is where ADR provides a new way to think about cybersecurity.

Currently, your cybersecurity or IT team needs to manage multiple tasks across multiple systems, which requires in-depth knowledge of computer systems and cybersecurity threats. Consequently, response time is often slow. With ADR, tasks are automated, and threats are investigated, validated, and remediated in the background––greatly boosting your operational efficiency and effectiveness.

As the threat environment continues to evolve, you will need to keep pace and ADR changes the security equation by improving the accuracy of detection and speed of response, saving you a lot of time and hassle—not to mention money.