If you are a regular visitor to our blog, you'll know we like to keep an eye on the latest industry trends.

This time it’s the latest buzz around cyber security that has caught our eye so here’s a mini round up of the five biggest trends expected to play a big role in online security this year.

First up is the rise of the zero-trust model

As the name suggests, this model essentially gets rid of the idea that internal staff are trustworthy people who mean no harm. Sounds a little damning but a zero-trust policy works by continuously evaluating individuals’ behaviour and actions, with the aim of identifying and eliminating potential threats. That means team members who are playing by the rules have nothing to fear from zero trust policies and for the businesses that employ this strategy; they can rest assured that their taking a very proactive approach to keeping their business data safe and secure.

Get used to even more biometric technology

Now biometric tech isn’t especially new, Apple has their fingerprint ID technology on their iPhone devices and facial recognition software is used across a number of mobile and social applications. The reason biometric technology is expected to increase over 2019 though, is the fact that biometric tools are good at what they do. They have repeatedly been proved to increase how effective security measures are and slowly the general public is becoming more and more comfortable with the idea of biometric security. On top of this, funding continues to be ploughed into biometric technologies and user experience for these tools is improving as a result. In short, as the usability improves and the public becomes more open to it and the funding continues, there’s nothing to stop biometric technology truly going mainstream.

GDPR compliance will be sold as a service

GDPR has been around for a while now and it was a big deal when the deadline for getting compliant was looming. Now that date has passed, many businesses have been lulled into a false sense of security as the big fines that were threatened to non-compliant businesses have yet to be delivered. However, we don’t think this will be the case forever and as GDPR becomes more readily enforced, the GDPR compliance as a service market will grow. In fact, there are predictions that GDPR compliance as a service will increase by a massive 75% from 2018 to 2019, so this really is one to watch.

Businesses will start taking stock of IoT devices

According to The Second Annual Study on the Internet of Things (IoT): A New Era of Third-Party Risk, in 2018, 97% of security professionals agreed that a cyber-attack caused by an insecure device could be disastrous for their business. Despite that, only 15% of these businesses had an inventory of IoT devices connected to their systems and even less had a security protocol in place that would allow them to disconnect these devices if they were identified as high-risk. As businesses become more aware of the risks of these types of devices, you can bet that many more will start taking a proactive approach to reducing these vulnerabilities. That means we’ll see more companies making a proper inventory of all connected devices and following the best practice advice of the NIST Cyber Security Framework.

Last but by no means least, crypto-jacking is here to stay

We blogged quite recently about Cryptojacking, the unauthorised use of some else’s computer to mine cryptocurrency, (for a more in-depth explanation read this) and according to recent statistics, this type of cyber attack is on the increase. In 2018, Check Point noted that the global impact of crypto miners had doubled in the first half of 2018 alone and as a result, experts think we can expect to see a lot more of this over 2019.

If you need help with your cyber security, why not talk to one of our experts today?