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As our society has shifted more into the digital age, so, seemingly, has crime. This is in relation to a specific form of crime, one that harnessing digital technology. Over the last couple of years, there has been an overall increase in cyberattacks and an overall expansion of the types of attacks being implemented.
Combined with the state of the economy and the lack of available talent in the technology industry, there is recipe for disaster in the new digital age.
Looking at the rest of 2023, Nuspire, a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP), CSO J.R. Cunningham and VP of Cybersecurity Consulting Mike Pedrick, have explained to Digital Journal what the main cybersecurity challenges are.
Year of the Consumer-Centric and IoT Attacks
According to Cunningham, it is the Internet of Things that we need to be most concerned about.
As he notes: “With homes being much more connected now than ever, 2023 potentially shapes up to be the year that consumers experience damaging cyberattacks. Although we have new and emerging standards for how connected things talk to each other, such as the Matter standard that IoT companies have agreed to adopt, this could be the year we begin to see pretty significant attacks against smart devices, smart homes, smart appliances, and personal digital assistants.”
The challenges are best realised in terms of fraud rates. Here Cunningham, observes: “The consumer is certainly used to scams and phishing, but they associate cyberattacks like this with large businesses. Being a victim of such an attack may leave individuals shocked as they are not used to waking up and the lights don’t work or the refrigerator is off. Consumers should begin to brace themselves now.”
A U.S. Answer to GDPR
Addressing the problem from a different standpoint, Pedrick looks at data privacy and the regulatory framework, considering: “Since 2018, there’s been a lot of buzz, just below the surface, regarding the United States federal government implementing privacy legislation similar to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR. Many states have adopted their own privacy standards, leveraging many of the fundamental principles at the core of GDPR, but still, nothing at the national level has been passed.”
As to the near-future, Pedrick thinks: “2023 may be the year where the industry buzz, combined with the potential for politically motivated attacks or corporate data breaches associated with the conflicts abroad, may finally cause Washington to take up the conversation around consumer data privacy and, most importantly, ownership of personal contact and telemetry data. A core tenet of GDPR is that the data subject owns their data without question or debate. Such a stance would prove revelatory here in the US and would mean significant changes for big tech.”
