146B Customer Records On Dark Web By 2023

A new report has found that over 33 billion records will be stolen by cybercriminals in 2023 alone.

The new findings gathered by Juniper Research and published in its report, “The Future of Cybercrime & Security: Threat Analysis, Impact Assessment & Leading Vendors 2018-2023,” shows that there will be a staggering increase of 175 percent in cybercrime in 2023. That’s compared to the 12 billion records expected to be compromised this year, resulting in a cumulative loss of over 146 billion records for the whole period.

The report notes that “in spite of legislation like GDPR and PSD2 mandating strong cybersecurity and authentication measures to protect personal and financial data, average levels of cybersecurity spend will remain relatively static.”

However, while the number of records breached each year is expected to nearly triple over the next five years, cybersecurity spending will only increase by an average of 9 percent per company each year. The report points out that the cost of breaches can exceed millions of dollars, yet spending by small businesses in 2018 will only make up 13 percent of the overall cybersecurity market in 2018, despite over 99 percent of all companies being small businesses.

In addition, many of these smaller companies use consumer-grade products, spending an average of just under $500 per year on cybersecurity. This will leave them vulnerable to newer forms of malware, which needs to be prevented by more advanced cybersecurity.

“Juniper’s strategic analysis of 48 leading cybersecurity companies shows that AI and predictive analytics are now table stakes for this market,” research author James Moar said in a press release. “These technologies need to be made available to all businesses, regardless of size.”

The research also found that the U.S. will become a more prominent target over the next five years. That is because the country has a great deal of national and international consumer and corporate data in a disparate range of institutions and regulations, making it easier to find and exploit weaknesses. In fact, Juniper expects that over half of all data breaches globally will occur in the U.S. by 2023.