Is your data protected for the future?

Each year there are more cyber attacks. This past year wannacry virus targeted the healthcare industry and correupted the data for thousands of users. You never know whether or not your industry will be targeted this year, but there are trends we can look at to make predictions of what these attacks will look like.

Symantec just released their 2019 predictions. The highlights involve AI powered attacks, and attacks on AI. You can read the highlights below, or see the entire article here.

"The long-awaited commercial promise of AI has begun to materialize in recent years, with AI-powered systems already in use in many areas of business operations. Even as these systems helpfully automate manual tasks and enhance decision making and other human activities, they also emerge as promising attack targets, as many AI systems are home to massive amounts of data.

In addition, researchers have grown increasingly concerned about the susceptibility of these systems to malicious input that can corrupt their logic and affect their operations. The fragility of some AI technologies will become a growing concern in 2019. In some ways, the emergence of critical AI systems as attack targets will start to mirror the sequence seen 20 years ago with the internet, which rapidly drew the attention of cyber criminals and hackers, especially following the explosion of internet-based eCommerce.

Attackers won’t just target AI systems, they will enlist AI techniques themselves to supercharge their own criminal activities. Automated systems powered by AI could probe networks and systems searching for undiscovered vulnerabilities that could be exploited. AI could also be used to make phishing and other social engineering attacks even more sophisticated by creating extremely realistic video and audio or well-crafted emails designed to fool targeted individuals. AI could also be used to launch realistic disinformation campaigns. For example, imagine a fake AI-created, realistic video of a company CEO announcing a large financial loss, a major security breach, or other major news. Widespread release of such a fake video could have a significant impact on the company before the true facts are understood.

And just as we see attack toolkits available for sale online, making it relatively easy for attackers to generate new threats, we’re certain to eventually see AI-powered attack tools that can give even petty criminals the ability to launch sophisticated targeted attacks. With such tools automating the creation of highly personalized attacks–attacks that have been labor-intensive and costly in the past–such AI-powered toolkits could make the marginal cost of crafting each additional targeted attack essentially be zero."

December 6, 2018 | Categories: Non-Profit | Tags: Endpoint Protection