Security Firm Juniper Research indicate that cyber breaches caused by hackers will cost industry and businesses a staggering $2 trillion dollars by 2019.
The relentless drive to digitize and connect every device with new technology promises increased efficiencies to everyone involved. These advances will come at a price, according to security firm Juniper Research. Essentially, data breaches in the future are going to be very, very expensive.
The firm revealed the news in a Cybercrime and the Internet of Threats report which cited consumerization and the digitizing of corporate information as principal reasons for the rise of cyber breaches. Due to this, the estimated increase in the cost of data breaches will go up to $2.1 trillion dollars by 2019.
This would be a four-fold increase in comparison to the estimated cost of breaches in 2015.
Even though Internet of Things (IoT) devices are the biggest bait for hackers with it being a new technology which still needs to be mastered, the research says the majority of these breaches will come from existing IT and network infrastructure. The report also asserts that hackers are becoming more professional, with the steady creation of cybercrime products (malware creation software) over the past year.
“Currently, we aren’t seeing much dangerous mobile or IoT malware because it’s not profitable”, noted report author James Moar.
“The kind of threats we will see on these devices will be either ransomware, with consumers’ devices locked down until they pay the hackers to use their devices, or as part of botnets, where processing power is harnessed as part of a more lucrative hack.”
“With the absence of a direct payout from IoT hacks, there is little motive for criminals to develop the required tools.”
Here are a few more pointers as estimated from the report:
- About 60 percent of data breaches in 2015 will be in North America.
- That percentage should decrease over time as more countries around the globe get connected.
- By 2020, the average cost of a data breach will exceed $150 million.
The report also highlighted an increase in the volume of cyber-attacks targeting businesses as another factor adding to the growing cost of data breaches. Juniper Research is just one of many security firms to warn of the effectiveness of basic cyber-attacks.
For instance, Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report revealed the alarming stat that one in four phishing attacks is successful. The same report also highlighted a lack of interest in the mobile platform within the hacker community, adding that only a meager 0.3% of infections occurred on smartphones and tablets.
