Question: Are we looking for more or less threats this year and if so what kind?

Hey folks,

I want this to be a post where you can ponder and form your own opinion. The trends set forth by experts are predictions of what may happen, what may be seen, and what could happen. In no way is it exact, and its a retrospective.

With that out the way, the article entitled The Everyday Cyber Threat Landscape: Trends from 2019 to 2020 caught my attention recently. Trend Micro has a great history of predicting what may happen, what is seen, and what is far out there. I really like the work they do in this field, and they can be known as a true leader in this field.

Headings within this article include:

• Top five threats of 2019
• What to look out for in 2020
• How to stay safe
• How Trend Micro can help

Trend Micro has had a lot of experience in this field, and the longest serving company and innovating to stay one step ahead of the threat actors if possible is a stepping stone.

Here are the top threats we need to be aware of. Remember there could be more we are not aware of.

• Home network threats
• end point threats
• mobile security threats

online accounts under attack

• breaches

You would want to hope that breaches which contain personally identifiable information would be going down, especially since services like Paypal, Apple Pay, Google Wallet, and others are in use by some people. I know that Apple Pay is being taken by stores because recently I’ve implemented and used it a few times within the last couple of weeks. It does make it convenient!

I see that when it bills my credit card, the credit card has the last 4 digets, and even in there, it has the last 4 of a different account number altogether. If there is a breach, nobody can do anything with that number as my understanding of this is tied to the phone itself, and so each phone will have a different account number.

If I’m wrong, someone please correct me, but this is how I understand it.

What can we expect in 2020 according to this article?

• Smart homes under siege
• Social engineering online and by phone
• Threats on the move
• Worms make a comeback

I’m not going to paste the article in full as there are links to various other aspects of this including text messaging and other things, so its best to click through to the article and read it.

Since I only have one computer, thats good enough for me. I must keep it as safe as possible, this is definitely something I’m trying to do every day.

There are basic common things we should do when it comes to staying safe. Make sure we apply patches and get router updates. I need to figure out how to get in to my router and see if there are any updates to apply. I’ve never had to worry about that, but at some point, I need to figure this out. I don’t even know the name of the modem/router I even have or how to get in to it.

Feel free to discuss this one, as I know it’ll be a big topic this year. Thoughts are welcome.