Cyber breaches will cost the global economy more than £1.3bn by 2019, increasing to almost four times the estimated cost of breaches in 2015, a new study claims.
According to Juniper Research, majority of the cyber breaches will come from existing IT and network infrastructure. While new threats targeting mobile devices and the IoT (Internet of Things) are being reported at an increasing rate, the number of infected devices is minimal in comparison to more traditional computing devices.
The research report entitled The Future of Cybercrime & Security: Financial and Corporate Threats and Mitigation, also highlights the increasing professionalism of cybercrime, with the emergence of cybercrime products over the past year, as well as the decline in casual activist hacks.
“Currently, we aren’t seeing much dangerous mobile or IoT malware because it’s not profitable”, noted report author James Moar.
“The kind of threats we will see on these devices will be either ransomware, with consumers’ devices locked down until they pay the hackers to use their devices, or as part of botnets, where processing power is harnessed as part of a more lucrative hack. With the absence of a direct payout from IoT hacks, there is little motive for criminals to develop the required tools.”
The research firm predicts that although nearly 60 percent of anticipated data breaches worldwide in 2015 will occur in North America, the proportion of strikes will fall over time as other countries become richer and invest in more computing.
Furthermore, Juniper predicts that the average cost to business of a data breach will exceed $150m (£100m) by 2020 as more business infrastructure is connected.
The whitepaper, Cybercrime & the Internet of Threats, is currently available to download from the Juniper Research website together with details of the full research and interactive dataset.
