SINGAPORE, Dec. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Cyber security
received heightened interest in 2016 due to a spate of cyber
attacks in the region. These included cyber attacks on the database
of 55 million voters at the
Philippines Commission on Elections (COMELEC), the National
Payment Corporation of India
(NPCI), US$81 million cyber heist at
the Bangladesh Central Bank and the massive data leaks as shown by
the Yahoo data incidents.
As evidenced by the above, cyber attacks can impact any industry
at any time. In fact, as more industries become increasingly
connected to the Internet due to the Internet of Things, it is more
essential than ever to consider if your organisation is cyber ready
for 2017.
Frost & Sullivan's Asia Pacific Cyber Security practice
analysts share their key cyber security predictions for 2017.
1. Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks will overtake
Ransomware and Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attacks
BEC generally happens when email accounts of key executives are
compromised and involves payments made to fraudulent bank accounts.
In Singapore alone, about
S$19 million has been lost through
BECs between January to September
2016. There was an increase of 20% in number of such cases
as compared to the same period last year. Police investigations
revealed that the scam usually involves businesses with overseas
dealings with email as the main form of communication in the
dealings.
"As BECs are relatively easier to execute and evades cyber
defense tools better than other popular attack vectors such as
ransomware and APTs, it can potentially be the main cyber threat in
Asia," noted Charles Lim, Industry Principal, Cyber Security
practice, Frost & Sullivan, Asia
Pacific.
2. DDoS attacks might cause the Internet to be down for an
entire day in a country
Globally, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) volumetric
attacks hit over 1 Tbps of traffic and shut down several popular
online services in 2016. Whilst government authorities grapple with
ensuring strict security regulations and manufacturers continue to
deliver insecure IoT devices to the market, coupled with the fact
that internal volumetric attacks to DNS servers for service
providers are not well defended, cyber attackers will most likely
attempt to exploit the vulnerability to the next level and bring
down the internet in a country for at least a day.
3. Greater enforcement expected for Internet of Things
devices to meet cyber security standards
As authorities become increasingly concerned about the threats
unsecured IoT devices will pose to the community, it will be
illegal for these manufacturers to sell their products in countries
that demand these devices comply with security standards. The
recent Mirai botnets exploiting the vulnerabilities of IP cameras
are an example of how manufacturers did not include a security
process of changing default passwords when connecting the devices
to the Internet.
4. The healthcare sector will have more stringent regulations
towards ensuring uptime of computer systems handling critical
operations.
Globally, ransomware attacks on computer systems of healthcare
providers in 2016 had infected computer systems and disrupted
operations hence patients in need of immediate attention had to be
diverted to other hospitals. While major healthcare providers in
Asia had initiatives to comply
with security standards such as HIPAA, their use of legacy security
tools to meet minimal compliance standards could not keep up with
the new types of cyber attacks.
These days, stolen personal healthcare records are worth more in
the dark web than credit card information and medical machines are
increasingly connected to the Internet which pose as a possible
safety risk to patients. The healthcare industry needs a good
'cyber health check' before it is too late.
5. New technologies such as Blockchain may be used to enhance
trust between stakeholders and facilitate exchange of threat
intelligence among industries
The setup of more Information Sharing and Analysis Centers
(ISAC) will form platforms for both the private and private sector
participants to share threat intelligence. However, participants
are wary of exposing their weak security posture when contributing
intelligence due to a successful attack, and there are issues of
untrusted sources that may contribute the wrong intelligence.
Blockchain may emerge as the technology to facilitate the exchange
as it authenticates the trusted party to contribute, obfuscates the
contributor's detail with anonymity, and offers a tamper proof
system that prevents unauthorized alteration of any data
shared.
6. More adoption of technologies that focus on threat actors
and "hunting" for their next attack
Traditionally, enterprise security teams have adopted a "wait
and see" posture, and try to build up their defenses to mitigate
the possible threats they are aware of. However, more enterprises
are working towards trying to know what the attackers are
innovating in terms of cyber attack techniques, their next moves,
and build up their defenses to counter the new attack vectors.
7. More enterprises will offer bug bounty programs, which are
seen as a measure to deter talents from taking up black hat
hacking
The idea is simple yet effective: pay the attackers for finding
and reporting major vulnerabilities in enterprise and/or developed
applications. Enterprises will be able to strengthen their security
defenses through the crowdsourcing model and encouraging potential
hackers to discover more and do more of the good rather than the
bad.
8. More drones will be used to facilitate cyber
attacks
A group of researchers from iTrust, a Center for Research in
Cyber Security at the Singapore
University of Technology and Design, demonstrated that it is
possible to launch a cyber attack using a drone and a smartphone.
In the future, it is expected that drones will be an easy way
to scan for unsecured wireless traffic as a way of performing war
driving attacks.
While more applications are developed for drones in commercial
use, inevitably cyber criminals will think of new techniques in
launching a cyber attack. Other possible types of attacks include
delivering GPS jamming signals to a vessel or dropping USB drives
containing malware to air-gapped critical infrastructures.
Contact
Melissa Tan
Corporate Communications – Asia
Pacific
P: +65 6890 0926
F: +65 6890 0999
E: melissa.tan@frost.com
About Frost & Sullivan
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addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities
that will make or break today's market participants. For more than
50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global
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