Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2019. Read them in this 11th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Laurence Pitt is Global Security Strategy Director at Juniper Networks
New Advancements Bring New Threats
2019 brings the promise of innovative developments and use
cases for 5G, AI and machine learning, and automation - but these industry and
technological advancements will undoubtedly be met with sophisticated and
aggressive cybersecurity threats. Enterprises and consumers should be excited
for the benefits that voice activated technologies and 5G connectivity espouse
while actively taking precautions to strengthen network security and ensure
their security posture is strong enough to combat these threats in the face of
adoption.
The advent of skill-squatting
In 2019, we can expect skill-squatting to become a
legitimate threat. With more and more voice assistant-powered smart speakers
entering the home, "skills" - verbal commands that instruct the assistant to
perform a task - are also becoming increasingly commonplace. Skill-squatting is
a new threat where a skill is developed to look for certain statements and then
re-direct them before running the requested command. This could mean that a
request to "play some music in the kitchen" could be overtaken to first extract
a user's Wi-Fi information, home network and possibly password, before running
the usual command so the user never knows their information has been stolen.
With smart speakers ruling the home, we can expect to see them become bigger
targets in 2019.
Malware will
become faster, stronger and (artificially) intelligent
2019 will see wider adoption in AI and Machine Learning in
forensic incident analysis and with that, a surge in abuse of the technologies.
While false positives and negatives associated with the technologies cause
industry experts to question their reliability, cybercriminals don't share
those concerns. AI and ML will open new doors for hackers to carry out more
sophisticated and personal attacks in the new year and beyond, making it
critical for enterprises to stay one step ahead and stop attacks in their
tracks.
5G will make it faster and easier... for the bad guys to
get in
2019 will bring widespread 5G connectivity for
the very first time, and with it, exponential growth in connected devices.
Regardless of the purpose of the device, any device connected to 5G has the
potential to become a target for hackers - even if it runs on a secured 5G
network, it is still a wireless device and therefore available as a target for
a breach. The growth of 5G means that the industry needs to be considering how
to have an effective security posture and a solid foundation of security before
these new networks are deployed.
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About the Author
Laurence Pitt is
Global Security Strategy Director at Juniper Networks. He has more than twenty
years of cybersecurity experience, having started out in systems design and
moved through product management in areas from endpoint security to managed
networks. In his role at Juniper, he articulates security clearly to business
and across the business, creating and having conversations to provoke careful
thought about process, policy and solutions. Security throughout the network is
a key area where Juniper can help as business moves to the cloud and undertakes
the challenge of digital transformation.