Trend Micro: One major data breach a month in 2014?

Published December 12, 2013 12:19pm

If you thought this was a bad year in terms of data breaches, wait till 2014 when a major data breach is likely to occur each month.

This was one of eight grim predictions for 2014 by security vendor Trend Micro, which also predicted the basic two-step verification may no longer be enough to prevent attacks.

"We will see one major data breach incident a month," chief technology officer Raimund Genes said in the company's security predictions for 2014.

Trend Micro said this year's breaches had victimized Adobe, Evernote, LivingSocial and Yahoo! Japan.

It said major incidents like these may continue to ensue in 2014.

"No organization will be safe from data breaches. Someone will always attempt to break in to networks using new tools and by exploiting vulnerabilities," it said.

On the other hand, it said stolen data will be dissected into better-quality chunks and be more customized before being sold underground.

Trend Micro also said that with Microsoft ending support for Windows XP in 2014, there may be more attacks targeting it since XP remains popular.

"Data suggests that around 20% of PC users still run Windows XP. While the number may not be as big as the Windows 7 base, they still represent a good number of potential victims. It doesn’t help that Windows XP still has a current install base of over 300 million computers inside corporations as well," it said.

Other tech trends Trend Micro foresees for 2014 include:

- Mobile banking may suffer from more man-in-the-middle attacks and the basic two-step verification may not be enough to protect users.

- Cybercriminals will increasingly use targeted-attack methodologies like open source research and customized spear phishing along with multiple exploits.

- There may be more clickjacking and watering-hole attacks, new exploits of choice, and attacks via mobile devices.

- Attacks exploiting vulnerabilities in widely used but unsupported software like Java 6 and Windows XP will intensify.

- The Deep Web will challenge law enforcement, which may struggle to build capacity against cybercrime on a large scale.

- Public distrust will ensue especially after the exposure of state-sponsored monitoring activities. This will result in a period of efforts to restore privacy.

- There may not yet be any major breakthrough in cybercrime as criminals will wait for a "killer app" with mass appeal to emerge.

Trend Micro also said the next big thing cybercriminals are waiting for could be in the world of augmented reality, with virtual reality headsets becoming a disruptive technology.

Banking threats

Trend Micro noted a "notable surge" in online banking, with more than 200,000 infections in the third quarter of 2013.

But it said the banking threats are no longer limited to computers and are going mobile as well.

"Android will remain the most dominant OS in the market. But this dominance will continue to be exploited, as we predict the volume of malicious and high-risk Android apps to reach 3 million by the end of 2014. Though Google did exert effort to address this, most recently with the release of Android KitKat, not all users can take advantage of new security features due to the OS’s heavily fragmented update process," it said.

It also said that while there may be new operating systems like Tizen, Sailfish and Firefox OS, they may still allow Android apps to run - and allow cybercriminals to stage multiplatform threats. — TJD, GMA News

Tags: trendmicro, cybersecurity