CyberScout shares key cybersecurity predictions for 2020; predicts persistent threats in areas of privacy and cybersecurity

As 2019 comes to an end, cybersecurity experts are preparing for a new year—and a new decade—and all the cyber scams, breaches, attacks and privacy concerns that threaten consumers and businesses. CyberScout continues to strengthen defenses against the constantly evolving cyber threats that will shape the 2020 security landscape, encouraging consumers and business owners to stay informed and aware. 

"While consumers and business leaders are more aware of cybersecurity and privacy than ever before, cybercriminals continue to innovate," said CyberScout founder and chairman Adam Levin. "As defenses improve, the attack vectors become more nuanced and technically impressive. You are your best guardian when it comes to your privacy and personal cybersecurity."  

Levin's has listed the following 20 cybersecurity predictions for 2020:

1. Cybersecurity workforce shortages. There will be a shortage of experts, adding pressure on CISO's charged with tackling an increasing issue environment. With the demand for cybersecurity professionals far exceeding supply, the market will have to start filling openings with less qualified people. 

2. The disinformation blob will grow. With the success of weaponized misinformation campaigns in the 2016 and 2018 U.S. elections, expect to see more of them in the private sector, with businesses adopting troll farm tricks to hurt the competition. 

3. Ransomware will continue to thrive. Phishing attacks will continue to lead to ransomware infecting more and more networks. Businesses, municipalities and other organizations will continue to pay whatever they must in order to regain control of their data and systems, and will also see better backup practices that will help minimize or neutralize the threat of these attacks.  

4. IoT botnets will make dystopian paranoia seem normal. IoT will continue to grow exponentially. In 2020, there will be somewhere around 20 billion IoT devices in use around the world. Unfortunately, many are not secure because they are protected by nothing more than manufacturer default passwords readily available online. They will be weaponized (like in years' past), but with increasing skill and computing power.
   
   
   

5. The integrity of the U.S. elections will be questioned—for good reason. There are still voting machines in use that are far from secure and would not pass the simplest of audits. Some states continue to use machines that leave no paper trail. Look forward to questions regarding election security all year.  

6. Cryptocurrency miners will continue to get rich off stolen electricity. Related to the botnet craze, we will see an increase in computing power theft used to mine cryptocurrency. With bots becoming exponentially more effective as the result of AI and cloud computing, a renaissance of Wild West behavior in the global blockchain digital ledger can be expected. 

  

7. Zero-trust environments will be talked about. A few may exist. The assumption that one can trust the home team—people within one's organization—has been replaced with zero-trust policies. Zero-trust simply means that no one can be trusted, in or outside the organization. With this assumption foremost, new systems make breaches and compromises harder to happen. 

8. More people will know what "protect surface" means. Protect surface is part of the zero-trust environment. An organization's attackable surface includes every error-prone human in its employ as well as the mistakes in configuration they may have committed along the way and any number of other issues. The protective surface is much smaller and must be kept out of harm's way. The more the subjects is spoken about, the stronger its cybersecurity is expected to be. 

9. Cars will be frozen. Driverless cars are going to hit things as well as get hit by hackers. Cars that talk to satellites are toast. It's going to happen. (Or not. But it totally could.) 

10.  5G will make the cyber smash grab a thing.  5G is going to make everything move fast, as will the new generation USB4 devices. With quicker speed, it will take much less time to transfer data. Coincidentally, criminals appreciate this as much as the rest of us.  

11. Social media will no longer need to be private. Social media companies will probably become a bit more responsible when it comes to the way they gather, store, crunch, analyze and sell our data to marketing companies and small to medium sized businesses looking to connect directly with consumers. 
    
    
    

12.  State-sponsored traffic jams will be a thing. Hackers are going to target operational systems with an array of tactics that include ransomware and more DDoS attacks that will snarl things up in ways we've not yet seen. The targets will be financial institutions, the power grid, elections, proprietary business information, city services and infrastructure like traffic lights and much more that can wreak havoc on our day to day lives.

13.  You're going to have personal cyber insurance. Insurance companies will be writing more comprehensive cyber liability policies for businesses and offering innovative personal cyber coverage for consumers. 

14.  HR will save money by spending some. More employers will offer their employees identity protection products and services as part of their paid or voluntary benefits programs. An employee who has their identity stolen is not very productive and if, as part of that identity theft, their user ID or passwords are exposed, a thief might have what he or she needs to access an employer's network and sensitive databases. 

15.  The cloud will leak. The parade of stories about misconfigured cloud clients and data stored without any password protection on cloud services will continue apace, perhaps in part because of the CISO and cybersecurity workforce shortage discussed in the first prediction.  

16.  AI will gladly take one’s job. AI is here and it's willing to work. The CISO shortage as well as many of the innovations discussed in this list of predictions will be increasingly addressed and powered by Artificial Intelligence. 

"Disinformation efforts, election security and continued attacks on local governments and major metropolitan hubs are escalating concerns of how disruptive and dangerous cybercrimes are becoming," continued Levin. "2020 promises to be an interesting ride. Be smart and stay safe by staying informed and seeking cyber insurance protection for you, your family and your business."  

ABI Research recognises blockchain innovators kicking up a storm in decentralized cloud

ABI Research has identified the 15 hot tech innovators in the space that are already kicking up a storm in the cloud space: 0Chain, ælf, Ankr, DFINITY, Ethernity, Edge, Filecoin, iExec, Internxt, Golem, PPIO, Oasis Labs, Sia, Sonm, and Storj. Together, these startups have amassed over $600 million in funding in the last three years, through VCs and token sales (initial coin offerings).

Traditional centralized cloud computing has become a consolidated market with heavy-weight incumbents making penetration by new market entrants difficult. As a result, the offerings are high-priced and often locked into other cloud services from the same provider. Further, the complex nature of cloud configuration and the centralization aspect has made data security an emerging risk. 

Over the last few years, the decentralized cloud market has emerged with the goal to displace public cloud service providers with cheaper, more secure blockchain-based compute and storage alternatives. 

“The technology being built promises significant cost benefits over traditional offerings from existing cloud services, with containers, blockchain, and trusted computing being leveraged for security as well as simplicity. As the startups launch their mainnets and commercial offerings, the cloud market is likely to undergo significant upheaval,” says Michela Menting, Digital Security Research Director at ABI Research.

The technology leveraged is relatively new and untested, with founding developers looking to improve on existing blockchain technologies used in applications like Bitcoin. 

“The startups in the space are developing the infrastructure and the networks to be more power-efficient and scalable, as well as more resistant to common blockchain vulnerabilities such as 51 percent attacks, consensus delays, selfish mining, smart contract, and Denial of Service,” Menting added. “Critically, they are set to give traditional cloud providers a run for their money by offering significantly lower price points for cloud services. They are achieving this by leveraging a network of peers to offer spare computing power and storage capacity in exchange for token-based incentives.”

These findings are from ABI Research’s Hot Tech Innovators: Decentralized Cloud Computing and Storage report. This report is part of the company’s Blockchain & DLT research service, which includes research, data, and ABI Insights. 

Hot Tech Innovators reports focus on companies at the forefront of transformational innovation, particularly those that are younger and less well-known than the incumbents, at the technological forefront of their markets, developing new business models, destabilizing the current market and prime acquisition targets.

Utimaco strengthens data protection by releasing quantum-safe hardware security module for blockchain solutions

Utimaco has launched its Block-safe, its new hardware security module (HSM) designed for use with blockchain-based platforms that feature distributed ledger technology. An HSM is crucial to securing blockchain systems in order to cryptographically protect the information stored in them, maintain information integrity and ensure audit compliance. 

Utimaco Block-safe enables companies to generate, manage and protect cryptographic keys for blockchain applications. For example, private keys can be securely stored in accordance with PSD2 and GDPR security requirements. In addition, Block-safe allows for easy integration of new deployments in highly regulated environments, such as “Know Your Customer” (KYC) processes in accordance with the Money Laundering Act or smart payment methods based on blockchain.

Utimaco Block-safe generates private and public key pairs according to common blockchain-specific elliptic curves such as Secp256k1 (Bitcoin) or Stellar Ed25519 (Ethereum). Transactions can also be secured with MultiSign, whereby Block-safe allows the number of keys required for a valid transaction to be specified and verified (M from N-consensus procedure). 

Key pairs can be derived from a single master key in a secure environment according to BIP-32. The hierarchically deterministic wallets are also secured by using two-factor authentication with smart cards, and role-based access controls and separation of functions can be configured to secure the keys even further.

A software development kit enables Utimaco Block-safe to be configured to meet the individual requirements of companies. Furthermore, Block-safe has built-in post-quantum secure cryptographic random number generators in accordance with the SP 800-90 recommendation of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Volvo Cars part of Responsible Sourcing Blockchain network, launched by IBM, Ford and Volkswagen Group

The Responsible Sourcing Blockchain Network (RSBN), a blockchain network committed to strengthening human rights and environmental protection in mineral supply chains, announced that its digital supply chain for cobalt has moved beyond pilot phase and is progressing toward use in live production computing environments starting in spring 2020. 

Built on the IBM Blockchain Platform and assured by RCS Global Group, RSBN will have continued participation from founding members including Ford Motor Company, Volkswagen, LG Chem and Huayou Cobalt. Volvo Cars will join the network as its newest member with further partners from the automobile, technology and mining sectors expected to join this year. 

Providing traceability and verification of responsible sourcing practices from mine to market, including the end-to-end supply chains, the solution is a network accessible to companies at every tier of the supply chain, which complete an onboarding assessment verifying the members responsible sourcing practices. 

Blockchain makes it possible to securely and at-scale identify and label any subject and object entity with cryptographically verifiable security credentials. When literally everything is labeled with verifiable, authoritative, machine-readable security credentials (such as classification level, access category and others), multi-level security (MLS) systems can enforce mandatory and discretionary access controls and other MLS-specific isolation.

Focus industries include, but are not limited to automotive and consumer electronics, including their supply chains and the mining sector. A governance board representing members across these industries is being formed to help further ensure the platform's growth, functionality and adherence to good practice principles.

RSBN and its participants are building an open, industry-wide blockchain platform to trace responsibly produced minerals from source through to end product, with RCS Global assessing each participating entity against responsible sourcing requirements set by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and industry bodies.   

"We are setting in motion a process of mainstreaming responsible sourcing practices across major industries," said Dr. Nicholas Garrett, CEO of RCS Global Group. "We've reached significant new milestones as we've moved beyond testing, proving the merits of this coupled technology and assurance model can extend to a wide range of participants across every tier of the supply chain and to other minerals. The early addition of Volkswagen Group and now Volvo Cars to this collaboration confirms that blockchain technology together with responsible sourcing assurance can help address critical sustainability issues impacting the entire industry," he adds.  

Volvo Cars will be the initial company in the consortium to fully apply the RSBN solution in its LG Chem supply chain beginning in spring 2020.  The automaker also plans to apply RSBN to other key minerals found in its batteries, including nickel and lithium in the future. 

Volkswagen AG has been working with relevant battery suppliers to address the need for supply chain due diligence and is now aiming to significantly increase its supply chain mapping and auditing activities for key battery mineral supply chains. 

Through the RSBN, and other initiatives, Volkswagen AG is utilizing technology toward securing better supply chain traceability and transparency and to connect this information with the sustainability performance of supply chain partners. 

Ford states that as they are preparing to launch their global all-electric Mustang-inspired SUV next year, the RSBN becomes an important tool to strengthen transparency and visibility into its global mineral supply chain. Expanding this network beyond cobalt to other battery minerals will compound the RBSN's positive impact on human rights protection and labor practices.

In initial testing, the RSBN blockchain demonstrated how cobalt produced at Huayou's industrial mine site in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) could be traced through the supply chain to LG Chem's cathode and battery plant in South Korea, and then to its final destination, a Ford plant in the United States. An immutable audit trail captured on the platform delivered corresponding data providing documentation for the initial ethical cobalt production, its maintenance and its ethical provenance from mine to end manufacturer.

RCS Global Group builds on its supply chain mapping and auditing activities for global OEMs and key battery mineral supply chains and has successfully assessed and validated each supply chain participant against responsible sourcing standards developed by the OECD, as well as the good practice requirements of relevant industry organizations like the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI) Blockchain Guidelines.

Procurant acquires SureCheck to improve global food supply chain platform

Procurant, a Silicon Valley technology company transforming the global food supply chain, announced a definitive agreement to acquire the SureCheck mobile food safety solutions and monitoring business from ParTech Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of PAR Technology.

Procurant offers companies in the food industry a cloud-based perishable food procurement system that enables trading partner collaboration, IoT and sensor data collection, mobile messaging and alerts, secure storage of critical documentation and the sharing of food safety data in public or private blockchains including the IBM Food Trust. 

Procurant is transforming the global food supply chain with technology to reduce waste, increase visibility, improve food safety and digitize business from production to consumption. The company was founded by industry veterans with decades of experience delivering solutions to growers, shippers, distributors, retailers and foodservice operators. Procurant is backed by GLP Properties (glprop.com) with US$66 billion of assets under management in real estate and private equity funds around the world.

The platform and its related applications help farmers, producers, shippers, distributors and retailers in their strategic planning as well as their day-to-day supply chain processes.

With the addition of SureCheck’s suite of mobile food safety and task management applications and devices, Procurant now offers customers a uniquely comprehensive, operations-focused end-to-end food supply chain solution. The SureCheck suite is now part of a continuum of solutions that leverage a single, global platform designed for the unique requirements of the food industry.

All Procurant solutions benefit from the strengths of a shared infrastructure that includes scalability at consumer performance levels, from the user interface to business logic to storage; mobile as an integral part of the platform, with a focus on managing by exception; and blockchain options that route data to both public and private distributed ledgers.

“The combination of SureCheck’s leading mobile food safety and task management products with Procurant’s food supply chain platform creates a solution unmatched in this industry,” said Eric Peters, CEO of Procurant. “With food safety and visibility across the supply chain becoming ever more critical, Procurant’s innovative approach will help our customers move beyond simple homegrown systems of the past for better visibility, control and trust from farms to consumers.”

Acronis Cyber Cloud 8.0 to support enterprise-level deployments, protect complex infrastructures, sophisticated workloads

Acronis announced on Wednesday rollout of 8.0, a new version of Acronis Cyber Cloud, its cyber protection platform for service providers.

Acronis Cyber Cloud (formerly Acronis Data Cloud) is a platform that enables service providers to deliver cyber protection in an easy, efficient and secure way. 

With one SaaS solution, customers gain access to hybrid cloud backup, disaster recovery, AI-based ransomware protection, file sync and share, and blockchain-based file notarization and e-signature services, managed from a single console.

A few of the newer capabilities include efficient group-management operations, which boost service delivery significantly and further lower administrative overhead; several new disaster recovery service features, which enrich sales capabilities with support for a seamless, simplified customer onboarding and proof of concept (PoC) stage; and enhanced licensing and feature management, for an even easier upsell of new advanced and disaster recovery features.

Gartner looks ahead, identifies 10 key strategic technology trends for 2020

Gartner Inc. highlighted on Monday the top strategic technology trends that organizations need to explore in 2020. Analysts presented their findings during Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo, which is taking place here through Thursday.

Gartner defines a strategic technology trend as one with substantial disruptive potential that is beginning to break out of an emerging state into broader impact and use, or which is rapidly growing with a high degree of volatility reaching tipping points over the next five years.

The top 10 strategic technology trends for 2020 include hyperautomation, multiexperience, democratization of expertise, human augmentation, transparency and traceability, empowered edge, distributed cloud, autonomous things, practical blockchain, and AI security.

Hyperautomation is the combination of multiple machine learning (ML), packaged software and automation tools to deliver work. This technology refers not only to the breadth of the pallet of tools, but also to all the steps of automation itself (discover, analyze, design, automate, measure, monitor and reassess). Understanding the range of automation mechanisms, how they relate to one another and how they can be combined and coordinated is a major focus for hyper automation.

This trend was kicked off with robotic process automation (RPA). However, RPA alone is not hyperautomation. Hyperautomation requires a combination of tools to help support replicating pieces of where the human is involved in a task.

Through 2028, the user experience will undergo a significant shift in how users perceive the digital world and how they interact with it. Conversational platforms are changing the way in which people interact with the digital world. Virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) are changing the way in which people perceive the digital world. This combined shift in both perception and interaction models leads to the future multisensory and multimodal experience.

Democratization is focused on providing people with access to technical expertise (for example, ML, application development) or business domain expertise (for example, sales process, economic analysis) via a radically simplified experience and without requiring extensive and costly training. “Citizen access” (for example, citizen data scientists, citizen integrators), as well as the evolution of citizen development and no-code models, are examples of democratization.

Through 2023, Gartner expects four key aspects of the democratization trend to accelerate, including democratization of data and analytics (tools targeting data scientists expanding to target the professional developer community), democratization of development (AI tools to leverage in custom-developed applications), democratization of design (expanding on the low-code, no-code phenomena with automation of additional application development functions to empower the citizen-developer) and democratization of knowledge (non-IT professionals gaining access to tools and expert systems that empower them to exploit and apply specialized skills beyond their own expertise and training).

Human augmentation explores how technology can be used to deliver cognitive and physical improvements as an integral part of the human experience. 

Physical augmentation enhances humans by changing their inherent physical capabilities by implanting or hosting a technology element on their bodies, such as a wearable device. Cognitive augmentation can occur through accessing information and exploiting applications on traditional computer systems and the emerging multiexperience interface in smart spaces. 

Over the next 10 years, increasing levels of physical and cognitive human augmentation will become prevalent as individuals seek personal enhancements. This will create a new “consumerization” effect where employees seek to exploit their personal enhancements — and even extend them — to improve their office environment.

Consumers are increasingly aware that their personal information is valuable and are demanding control. Organizations recognize the increasing risk of securing and managing personal data, and governments are implementing strict legislation to ensure they do. Transparency and traceability are critical elements to support these digital ethics and privacy needs.

Transparency and traceability refer to a range of attitudes, actions and supporting technologies and practices designed to address regulatory requirements, preserve an ethical approach to use of artificial intelligence (AI) and other advanced technologies, and repair the growing lack of trust in companies. As organizations build out transparency and trust practices, they must focus on three areas - AI and ML; personal data privacy, ownership and control; and ethically aligned design.

Edge computing is a computing topology in which information processing and content collection and delivery are placed closer to the sources, repositories and consumers of this information. It tries to keep the traffic and processing local to reduce latency, exploit the capabilities of the edge and enable greater autonomy at the edge. 

A distributed cloud is the distribution of public cloud services to different locations while the originating public cloud provider assumes responsibility for the operation, governance, updates to and evolution of the services. This represents a significant shift from the centralized model of most public cloud services and will lead to a new era in cloud computing.

Autonomous things are physical devices that use AI to automate functions previously performed by humans. The most recognizable forms of autonomous things are robots, drones, autonomous vehicles/ships and appliances. Their automation goes beyond the automation provided by rigid programing models, and they exploit AI to deliver advanced behaviors that interact more naturally with their surroundings and with people. 

As the technology capability improves, regulation permits and social acceptance grows, autonomous things will increasingly be deployed in uncontrolled public spaces.

Blockchain has the potential to reshape industries by enabling trust, providing transparency and enabling value exchange across business ecosystems, potentially lowering costs, reducing transaction settlement times and improving cash flow. Assets can be traced to their origin, significantly reducing the opportunities for substitutions with counterfeit goods. 

Asset tracking also has value in other areas, such as tracing food across a supply chain to more easily identify the origin of contamination or track individual parts to assist in product recalls. Another area in which blockchain has potential is identity management. Smart contracts can be programmed into the blockchain where events can trigger actions; for example, payment is released when goods are received.

AI and ML will continue to be applied to augment human decision making across a broad set of use cases. While this creates great opportunities to enable hyperautomation and leverage autonomous things to deliver business transformation, it creates significant new challenges for the security team and risk leaders with a massive increase in potential points of attack with IoT, cloud computing, microservices and highly connected systems in smart spaces. Security and risk leaders should focus on three key areas — protecting AI-powered systems, leveraging AI to enhance security defense, and anticipating nefarious use of AI by attackers.