Security threats like ghostware, two-faced malware, headless worms, zombie botnets, machine-to-machine attacks: provoke a level of fear that seems fitting provided all that’s at stake. One of the great challenges of cybersecurity is that there always seems to be a new or growing threat on the horizon. Research company Gartner predicts there will be 6.8 billion connected devices in use in 2016, a 30 percent increase over 2015.
By 2020 that number will jump into more than 20 billion connected devices, predicts Gartner, especially as the “Internet of Things” continues to grow. That’s a very large playground for attackers with both corporate and consumer information hanging around in that playground. Wired magazine predicts the biggest potential cyberthreats for 2016 will include extortion hacks, attacks that change or manipulate data and the continued rise of the internet of things (IoT) zombie botnets, amongst others.
To learn more read, The Biggest Security Threats We’ll Face in 2016, by Kim Zetter of Wired.