Juniper Research forecasts that cybercrime will tip $5 trillion in 2024, from $3 trillion annually in 2018. The company says the cost will come mainly from fines for data breaches as regulation tightens, as well as a greater proportion of business lost as enterprises become more dependent on the digital realm.
The new research, The Future of Cybercrime & Security: Threat Analysis, Impact Assessment & Mitigation Strategies 2019-2024, noted that while the cost per breach will steadily rise in the future, the levels of data disclosed will make headlines but not impact breach costs directly, as most fines and lost business are not directly related to breach sizes.
Same culprit
The escalating warfare will see both sides – enterprises and cybercriminals – availing themselves of artificial intelligence (AI). Cybercriminals will use AI to learn the behaviour of security systems in a similar way to how cybersecurity firms currently employ the technology to detect abnormal behaviour. Deep fakes and other AI-based techniques will likely to play a part in social media cybercrime in the future.
Cybersecurity will become part of corporate culture but it will not necessarily gain traction with system users, opined Juniper. The researcher expects that security awareness training will become an increasingly important part of enterprise cybersecurity practice.
The gains that can be made by increasing human awareness of cybersecurity can make more efficient use of cybersecurity spending, which Juniper Research expects to rise by only 8% per annum during the forecast period.
“All businesses need to be aware of the holistic nature of cybercrime and, in turn, act holistically in their mitigation attempts,” remarked research author Susan Morrow. “As social engineering continues unabated, the use of human-centric security tactics needs to take hold in enterprise security.”
