2014 Norfect Security Predictions!!!

It's a new year and it's time for Norfect's 2014 security predictions.... You can run away now!

But before that, a small message to my amazing wife. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! My life would mean nothing without you by my side.

So without further ado, here are my predictions!

1. Many house users, corporations and websites will be attacked by new vulnerabilities found in Windows XP, Office 2003, and Java 6. You see, support and security patches will be suspended for these products in 2014 as they have reached their end of support life cycle. This means anyone using these products won't be able to patch any newly found vulnerabilities. Can you guess who will benefit most?

2. Hackers will increase the use of ransom-ware. They will attack end-users and corporations in order to get easy money to use elsewhere. It will be "fast money" used for other bigger breaches.

3. Which gets us to the prediction that major data breaches will increase significantly. At the end of 2013, not a month passed without at least 1 million user ID and password were hacked from known companies. In 2014, even more world-wide companies will be hacked. More usernames and passwords will be published online.

4. Due to the whistle-blowing actions of Edward Snowden, more and more people will be aware about their online privacy. Users will have less trust in the internet because anything they do can and is being traced by governments. Web activists will be pushing towards an internet reform.

5. Corporate mobile devices will be targeted by specific malware to gather sensitive data/emails. Many of these malware will be left undetected for a long period of time. Antiviruses for mobiles in my opinion are still pretty weak with many false positives that make you ignore real threats.

6. With more and more people storing information on the cloud, at least one major cloud storage provider will be hacked and millions of terrabytes of user data will be exposed.

7. Attacks will become more personalized. The attackers will spend more time focusing on their targets to be able to craft personalized attacks via emails or the social network.


And that's the end folks! What are your predictions?