With the end of 2012 fast approaching, security software vendors are gazing into their crystal balls to predict what the threat landscape will look like in 2013.
While obviously flipping another page in a calendar won’t lead cybercriminals to drastically change their tactics, the predictions serve as a good read on the pulse of hacking activities. Businesses can look to these as a checkpoint to see if they are properly prepared against new exploits, hacking techniques, and vulnerabilities.
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At the same time, security vendors can be self-serving in their analysis. Maybe they’re just predicting that you should be concerned about the exact thing their software guards against – what a coincidence. So we took a look at two different security vendors who are making predictions and picked out the common points. These represent the major security threats you’ll want to be aware of.
Here are the shared predictions of San Diego-based Websense and San Mateo, Calif.-based Symantec Inc.
Gazing into the security threatscape crystal ball. (Image: Symantec)
Mobile adware accelerates
Using mobile app stores as a gateway to user’s devices, malicious software programmers will be looking to get more insight into individuals and businesses via this method. This will pose particularly more threats to businesses that allow bring your own device (BYOD) culture and especially if users are bringing jailbroken devices into the office.
Also expect more mobile adware, that will send spam notifications to users and expose their sensitive data to hackers.
Hackers: to the cloud!
Hackers are magnetically drawn to the platforms with the most users. As more businesses shift to cloud computing, we can expect hackers will follow. Websense predicts that content management systems such as WordPress will be a great focus of attacks. Administrators will need to be on top of deploying updates and patches as they’re released.
