Approximately 55% of the world’s population uses the internet. This leaves a lot of room for cyber criminals, so much so that it is estimated that 30% of Europeans have suffered an incident, so it is expected that more than one million new employees dedicated to cyber security will be needed this year in Europe, according to a Orange and Samsung report.
Cyber criminals cash in of our neglect and / or naivety when choosing passwords, for instance . Or our ignorance when it comes to implementing our homes with a lot of smart devices – which are all connected to the network and are therefore vulnerable.
Some of the threats that more problems can bring this 2020 will be given by what they have described as ‘Cold Cyber War’, cyber attacks directed or supported by some states against others. And in this line, it is expected that the targeted ransomware – like the one that has affected companies such as Prisa, Everis, Sacyl or Prosegur in 2019 – will increase even more during this year.
60% of cyber attacks originate from the employees themselves, that is called the insider risk.
As for devices, the rise of the IoT -‘Internet of Things’, Internet of Things- and hyperconnection will cause ransomware attacks to become increasingly common in smartphones and other devices beyond the computer . And also the massive use of the cloud makes it a very interesting objective in the eyes of cyber criminals.
And as a novelty, this year the vulnerabilities are the results of the novelty of 5G and therefore the ‘deep fakes’, videos during which the voice and face of these who appear to distort reality are changed. Cyber criminals are expected to use them as a phishing mechanism against companies or to create, for example, fake pornographic videos of celebrities.
While the threat of suffering a cyber attack is there and it’s advisable to not live terrified by it or attempt to disconnect from everything sort of a lunatic, it is also vital to take care and take precautions.
We start with the essentials: passwords. Please stop using your dog’s name or your child’s birthday. It seems very basic, but ‘password’ and ‘12345’ continue to crown the worldwide list of the most used passwords. That’s the way humans are.
So if you don’t want to be hacked, look for something safer; combine numbers, uppercase letters, lowercase letters and symbols; and, above all, do not put the same password for everything, choose one for each service.
It is also essential that you protect the equipment you use. No matter how tedious the updates are, do them. They are fundamental as many correct security holes. Also, implement antivirus and anti-malware systems on your devices.
But in particular things, what you’ve got to try to to if you would like to be protected within the Digital Age is to use your head: don’t open suspicious emails or download apps of doubtful origin. And, as far as possible, avoid giving an excessive amount of personal data.
