AVG’s online security threat predictions for 2013

Cyber criminals will be targeting mobiles and the cloud as their main profit growth areas according to a 2013 prediction by the AVG Technologies security company.

AVG has surveyed the threat landscape for 2013 and identified five main areas facing the biggest digital threats – privacy, cloud security, mobile threats, PC threats and mobile-to-PC threats.

“Our lives are becoming more closely intertwined with online services and so the potential rewards for cybercriminals in that area grow too,” said Michael McKinnon, security advisor at AVG Technologies.

“I expect to see more attacks on the cloud services that businesses and consumers rely on day-to-day, both to cause disruption and to steal personal and financial data.”

AVG’s top five threat areas are:

PRIVACY

Ads viewed online on PCs, smartphones and tablets will be more aggressively targeted to individuals using browser tracking, social media trawling and geo-location data. These will be used to serve hyper customized ads all without the users’ consent.

CLOUD SECURITY

Cloud services like Dropbox, SkyDrive, Cloud Drive (Amazon) and Google Drive have already been attacked with malware in 2012 and that will continue in 2013 and potentially expose the risks in public cloud services.

MOBILE THREATS

Google’s mobile operating system Android is the main target for smartphone and tablet malware but security enhancements in the upcoming 4.2 version of Android will force threats to become even more sophisticated.

PC THREATS

The release of Windows 8 will motivate hackers to try and find new vulnerabilities and develop new forms of malware. What is also expected to rise in 2013 is the increase in the number of infected websites designed to exploit vulnerable computers.

MOBILE-TO-PC THREATS

The growing BYOD (bring your own device) trend will make it easier to spread malware and viruses on home and business networks. There is also expected to be more attacks targeted against mobile banking apps.

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