Stonesoft Predicts the Top Security Threats for 2013

Stonesoft predicts that the world will experience more unseen and unknown targeted cyber-attacks, espionage, and hacking in the coming year.

  • Dec 20, 2012

With 2013 just around the corner, IT security experts reflect on what has been and predict what is yet to come. Below are network security vendor Stonesoft’s top six predictions around the threats that we will be seeing in 2013.

“I believe in 2013 the security of the digital world will become even more dominant. It is a security trend, which is growing rapidly at the moment, and its importance will just continue to grow in the future,” says Jarno Limnell, director of cyber-security at Stonesoft. “This means there is also an increasing need and pressure to think about international norms, rules and regulations.”

With over 20 years of experience in network security, Stonesoft’s predicts:

1. The world will experience more targeted cyber-attacks. The development of highly sophisticated malware by state-sponsored organizations has the potential to radically affect the speed at which the wider threat landscape evolves. Cyber threats will become more unpredictable than ever before.

2. Espionage by nation-states will continue to rise. In 2012, botnets and malware silently sent the whole contents of the user’s hard drive to a control machine. This will continue to be a problem in 2013. The protection of critical national infrastructure will continue to be an extremely important aspect of cyber security.

3. Hacking will grow and become increasingly relevant and dreaded ­ in particular; it will become more aggressive and its means and impact will become more powerful. At the same time, the role of non-nation players will become more important, particularly in respect to expertise, not just resources.

4. We will see even more advanced evasions techniques (AETs) being used against organizations and governments. As security technologies and the overall capability to catch cyber criminals and hackers improve, they will invest their R&D resources in developing increasingly sophisticated and stealthy attack delivery technologies to improve their ROI. The most worrying part of this is that current security technologies are not capable of stopping AETs and the targets will remain unaware that they have been attacked.

5. In 2012, there were a lot of vulnerabilities in closed source enterprise applications such as Oracle, SAP and SCADA. These applications contain business critical data and are highly valuable targets for intruders. This will continue to be a problem in 2013.

6. Hackers will continue to target Android. The platform provides an attractive environment for malware, and hackers will take advantage of this. It is likely we will see the first global consumer brand go bankrupt as a consequence of a cyber-attack that ruins its reputation and customer confidence.

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