2011 was a crazy year filled with many high profile data breaches, and it looks like 2012 is going to be filled with even more surprises from the bad guys. The Times of India recently published an article featuring the Websense Security Labs’ Predictions for 2012, focusing on an increase in threats to social media sites and mobile phones.
The article highlights how the social media identity of users will prove to be more valuable to cybercriminals than their credit card information, and that the primary blended attack method used in most advanced attacks will go through social media “friends,” mobile devices and the cloud. Websense researchers have already seen attacks that used the chat functionality of a compromised social network to target individuals, and expect to see more in the next year.
Websense Chief Technology Officer Dan Hubbard is quoted: "The most advanced criminals are going to ride the waves of personal devices, personal social media use, and personal web activities of people to create more advanced, social engineering attacks to get in. Many of the business and government attacks in the coming year won't necessarily be about how complex the code is, but how well they can convincingly lure unsuspecting victims to click
The Times also details other predictions from the Websense Security Labs, such as how cybercriminals will take advantage of news surrounding the major events like the London Olympics and US Presidential Elections by designing malicious sites to look like legitimate news services.
Find out how to protect your organization from next year’s threats here.
Watch a video on the Websense Security Labs predictions for 2012 here.
Download the full report here.
English (US)