With most of our personal and financial information living in accessible portals online, cybersecurity is more crucial than ever. By 2020 it is estimated that over 1.5 billion people will be affected by some sort of data breach. As technology improves, it is almost an arms race of security and hackers alike. A webroot report claims that more than 90% of cybersecurity professionals are very worried about AI attacks and breaches. In addition, AI will provide insights and counter procedures to help defend against breaches- three quarters of professionals believe it will be impossible to defend against attacks without AI in the next three years. As Hal Lonas, Chief Technology Officer of Webroot says “There is no doubt about AI being the future of security as the sheer volume of threats is becoming very difficult to track by humans alone. We stress to organizations the importance of a contextual view of threats that also incorporates visibility and data points from networks, endpoints, and human threat researchers to derive the most accurate cyber risk assessment. As the results reveal, AI is here to stay and it will have a large impact on security strategies moving forward.” The knowledge and leverage of AI will be imperative to staying on top of cybersecurity.
In 2015, the cost of data breaches globally was $525 billion. Furthermore, it is predicted that in 2019, the cost will be 4 times that of 2015 thus reaching up to $2.1 trillion. Although it is reported when large businesses, banks and federal agencies experience data breaches, it should be noted that 20% of small to mid-sized businesses have been cyber crime targets. Due to the increasing cyber security crimes, the cyber insurance market has been getting a boost and are projected to grow from $2.5 billion in 2015 to $7.5 billion by 2020. Cybersecurity is steadily increasing in terms of its importance to governments, military, financial institutions and businesses as they collect, process and store confidential information on computers. Additionally, they transmit data across networks to other computers.
Financial services executives are already familiar with the impact that cyber-threats have had on their industry. In the 2016 global CEO survey, 69% of financial services’ CEOs reported that they are either somewhat or extremely concerned about cyber-threats, compared to 61% of CEOs across all sectors. This is not likely to change in the coming years, due to the following forces:
- Use of third-party vendors
- Rapidly evolving, sophisticated and complex technologies
- Cross-border data exchanges
- Increased use of mobile technologies by customers
- Heightened Cross-border information security threats
Overall, it may be perceived that cybersecurity is a specialized, niche career, but in an age where we manage more of our lives digitally, it means that anyone- in any career – should know simple things about keeping security up to par.
The Challenge
On either side of cybersecurity, how can it be used to solve real world challenges. Understanding and innovating in this field will be crucial to ensure the populations privacy and security.
