Cybercrime will cost businesses over $2 trillion by 2019

The research, entitled The Future of Cybercrime & Security: Financial & Corporate Threats & Mitigation, has found that the majority of these breaches will come from existing IT and network infrastructure. While new threats targeting mobile devices and the IoT (Internet of Things) are being reported at an increasing rate, the number of infected devices is minimal in comparison to more traditional computing devices.

The Cybercrime Economy Driving Action
The report also highlights the increasing professionalism of cybercrime, with the emergence of cybercrime products (i.e. sale of malware creation software) over the past year, as well as the decline in casual activist hacks. Hacktivism has become more successful and less prolific – in future, Juniper expects fewer attacks overall, but more successful ones.

“Currently, we aren’t seeing much dangerous mobile or IoT malware because it’s not profitable,” noted report author James Moar. “The kind of threats we will see on these devices will be either ransomware, with consumers’ devices locked down until they pay the hackers to use their devices, or as part of botnets, where processing power is harnessed as part of a more lucrative hack. With the absence of a direct payout from IoT hacks, there is little motive for criminals to develop the required tools.”

Other key findings include:
– Nearly 60% of anticipated data breaches worldwide in 2015 will occur in North America, but this proportion will decrease over time as other countries become both richer and more digitised.
– The average cost of a data breach in 2020 will exceed $150 million by 2020, as more business infrastructure gets connected.

The research noted that leading OTT (Over The Top) players such as Apple, Google and Amazon were in pole position to capitalise on this transition, with each now offering cloud-based solutions both for personal storage and premium content access. It argued that if consumers are tied into multiple products from an OTT, those consumers becomes increasingly reluctant to churn away from one element of the brand, as he/she loses access to content across their devices.

The whitepaper, Cybercrime & the Internet of Threats, is available to download from the new Juniper Research website together with further details of the full research and interactive dataset.