2012 Cyber Security Predictions

Dan Hubbard is chief technology officer for Websense. He is responsible for research and development of existing and new detection technologies, investigating disruptive technology trends, and driving innovation across

With all of the crazy 2011 security breaches, exploits and notorious hacks, what can we expect for 2012? I asked the top researchers at my company’s research labs to take a few minutes and provide their top predictions for the coming year.

Last year our predictions were very accurate, so these predictions should provide very useful guidance for security professionals.

1. Your social media identity may prove more valuable to cybercriminals than your credit cards

Bad guys will actively buy and sell social media credentials in online forums. Trust is the basis of social networking, so if a bad guy compromises your social media log-ins, there is a good chance they can manipulate your friends. Which leads us to prediction #2.

2. The primary blended attack method used in the most advanced attacks will be to go through your social media “friends,” mobile devices and through the cloud

We’ve already seen one APT attack that used the chat functionality of a compromised social network account to get to the right user. Expect this to be the primary vector, along with mobile and cloud exploits, in the most persistent and advanced attacks of 2012.

3. 1,000+ different mobile device attacks coming to a smartphone or tablet near you

People have been predicting this for years, but in 2011 it actually started to happen. And watch out: the number of people who fall victim to believable social engineering scams will go through the roof if the bad guys find a way to use mobile location-based services to design hyperspecific geolocation social engineering attempts.

4. SSL/TLS will put net traffic into a corporate IT blind spot

Two items are increasing traffic over SSL/TLS secure tunnels for privacy and protection. First is the disruptive growth of mobile and tablet devices. And second, many of the largest, most commonly used websites, like Google, Facebook, and Twitter are switching to https sessions by default, ostensibly a more secure transmission. But as more traffic moves through encrypted tunnels, many traditional enterprise security defenses are going to be left looking for a threat needle in a haystack, since they cannot inspect the encoded traffic.

See more of Dan's predictions here: http://www.businesscomputingworld.co.uk/2012-cyber-security-predictions/