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FINAL WORD
McAfee Labs preview
five security trends
for 2018
McAfee Inc. has released its McAfee Labs 2018
Threats Predictions Report, which identifies five key
trends to watch in 2018. This year’s report focuses
on the evolution of ransomware from traditional to
new applications, the cybersecurity implications of
serverless apps, the consumer privacy implications of
corporations monitoring consumers in their homes,
long-term implications of corporations gathering
children’s user-generated content, and the emergence
of a machine learning innovation race between
defenders and adversaries.
“T
he evolution of ransomware
in 2017 should remind us of
how aggressively a threat can
reinvent itself as attackers dramatically
innovate and adjust to the successful efforts
of defenders,” said Steve Grobman, Chief
Technology Officer for McAfee, LLC.
“We must recognise that although
technologies such as machine learning, deep
learning, and artificial intelligence will be
cornerstones of tomorrow’s cyber defences,
our adversaries are working just as furiously
to implement and innovate around them.
“As is so often the case in cybersecurity,
human intelligence amplified by technology
will be the winning factor in the ‘arms race’
between attackers and defenders.”
The report reflects the informed opinions
of dozens of McAfee thought leaders. It
examines current trends in cybercrime and
IT evolution, and anticipates what the future
may hold for organisations working to take
advantage of new technologies to both
advance their businesses and provide better
security protection.
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INTELLIGENTCIO
An adversarial machine learning ‘arms
race’ will develop between defenders
and attackers. Machine learning can
process massive quantities of data and
perform operations at great scale to detect
and correct known vulnerabilities, suspicious
behaviour and zero-day attacks. But
adversaries will certainly employ machine
learning themselves to support their attacks,
learning from defensive responses, seeking
to disrupt detection models, and exploiting
newly discovered vulnerabilities faster than
defenders can patch them.
To win this arms race, organisations must
effectively augment machine judgment
and the speed of orchestrated responses
with human strategic intellect. Only then
will organisations be able to understand
and anticipate the patterns of how attacks
might play out, even if they have never
been seen before.
Ransomware will pivot from traditional
extortion to new targets, technologies,
and objectives. The profitability of traditional
ransomware campaigns will continue to
decline as vendor defences, user education,
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