Just when you thought you had all of your defenses in place when fighting Malware, Cyber Attacks, and Ransomware… think again! Cybercriminals are busy crafting new methods of attacks that are ready to take your data for prey and pounce on your personal information. Here are 10 new sneaky attacks to be on the look-out for in the new year!

1. Rivaling governments and geopolitical cyber-warfare funding the efforts of cybercriminal gangs to create chaos, steal intellectual property, and profit from fraud and extortion by breaching personal data.
2. New variants of ransomware (including doxware, which threatens to publish sensitive data like browsing histories unless a ransom is paid)
3. Much more widespread use of cryptojacking (stealing computing resources to mine cryptocurrency without sharing the profits)
4. More distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on critical servers and networks, abetted by the conscription of armies of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices
5. Increasing use of fileless malware (which never becomes disk-resident, only loads directly into memory, and thus evades many signature-based endpoint anti-malware measures)
6. More synergistic attacks (in which multiple malware attacks are injected onto a system and the poorest-defended one activated using AI and ML to improve attack techniques
7. Continued reliance on phishing as the most effective attack vector for malware, with more sophisticated attacks targeted at higher-value individuals.
8. Increasingly target cloud services and edge computing environments with malware attacks
9. Enslave legions of IoT devices for use in DDoS and cryptojacking attacks
10. Exploit the new attack surfaces and rich data targets presented by 5G networks and applications.

But you don’t have be caught off guard!  Was upgrading your cyber protection software on your New Year To-Do list? You are in luck, because there’s still time. Consider these effective defenses from Acronis!

Acronis Active Protection

Acronis Active Protection is complementary to your existing server and endpoint defenses with AI-enabled malware behavioral detection and response. It’s the only way to keep up with the ever-mutating array of industrially-produced malware strains like ransomware and cryptojacking that are the leading contenders to top 2019’s list of most pervasive and successful attacks.

Acronis Backup with Active Protection

Acronis Backup with Active Protection provides exactly this kind of business-class cyber protection for cloud apps like Office 365. Shore up the defenses of critical cloud applications that are a newly-inviting target for cyber crooks, including Microsoft Office 365, OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint Online. You will likely discover gaps in that protection compared to your defenses of premise-based applications.

Want to learn more– Reach out to Lifeboat today to come up with a plan!