Cybercriminals will use different advanced technologies to upgrade the existing threats or they may target you with new and unpredictable threats. Given below are the largest threats of 2019 which will change in 2020 in terms of scale and tactics.

Malware infections of devices

In 2019 most of the firms battled to protect their endpoints. More than half of the firms suffered from malware infection in company-owned devices whereas half also find malware in their employee-owned devices.

In 2020 it is expected to see malware infection increase in employee-owned devices. Most of the firms allow their employees to use their own devices to cut costs, enable remote work and to get employee satisfaction. The cybercriminals will use the employee device to target the firms’ network and security.

Firms need to review, upgrade, and enforce their policies related to the use of personal devices. They should manage the technical issues, and security awareness training should be provided to the employees.

Phishing

The cybercriminals are getting much better in cracking security and privacy with the development of new well-produced, off-the-shelf tools and templates. There are various phishing kits developers which sell those tools in the black market. They are available at a very low price with fewer capabilities and higher price with much more capabilities.

It is expected that the phishing kit developers will offer more refined products, further lowering the skill required to launch a phishing campaign. The cybercriminals will improve the quality of their phishing campaigns by hiding the common sign used before.

Firms need to increase their security awareness programs and training the employee more often to avoid phishing attacks. They should keep their anti-phishing training up to date.

Ransomware attacks

Although the number of ransomware attacks has remained low in 2019 but it is expected to grow in 2020. Organizations are now more aware of ransomware attacks and have better endpoints tools for detecting such attacks.

In 2020, cybercriminals will change the appearance and methods used for ransom attacks while keeping the same purpose. They will change and add traits to confuse anti-ransomware protections. The cybercriminals will use different codes so that they can establish a foothold in a system, encrypt more data without being noticed, and possibly scale operations to other networks.

Firms need full-bodied security controls, monitoring and response in place to cover all the endpoints, networks and systems. Software should be install updates to avoid ransomware attacks.