Kaspersky Lab lays out its 2019 predictions

A new year is fast approaching, which means one thing: a spate of publicity-hungry cyber security companies laying out their industry predictions for the forthcoming 12 months.

This time, it’s Kaspersky Lab, which has released its targeted threat predictions for 2019.

The cyber security firm reckons that the year ahead will see advanced persistent threats (APTs) split into two groups: energetic, inexperienced newcomers, and the traditional, well-resourced and most advanced threat actors.

It predicts that the latter group will continue to pose a significant challenge for businesses because they explore new and increasingly sophisticated techniques that are more difficult to discover and attribute.

One of Kaspersky Lab’s big predictions is that there won’t be any more big APTs. Instead, threat actors will now go underground and stay below the radar to avoid publicity and reduce the likelihood of being exposed.

Other 2019 predictions for 2019 include an unstoppable development of IoT botnets and the fact that supply chain attacks are here to stay after considerable disruption in the last two years.

Vicente Diaz, security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, said: “In 2018, threat actors were led to new paradigms. Public awareness has grown and expert investigations have highlighted big cyber operations, making the topic front page news across the world.

“This will now lead to a change in the cyber landscape, as sophisticated threat actors seek silence and obscurity for their attacks in order to increase the likelihood of success. This shift makes the finding of new, large-scale, sophisticated operations very unlikely, and will definitely take the art of detection and attribution to the next level.”

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