Experian’s Data Breach Resolution group has released its Data Breach Industry Forecast 2019 Report, which provides predictions for data breaches in 2019, and outlines staggering statistics of data breaches that occurred in 2018.

One statistic is that the “number of records compromised in the first half of the year had already surpassed the total number of breached records for all of 2017, according to the Identity theft Resource Center’s 2017 Data Breach Industry Summary report.” And this statistic does not include the most recent Starwood/Marriott breach.

According to the Report, “cybercriminals are increasingly becoming more sophisticated and it’s a constant game of cat and mouse.” The Report lists 5 predictions for the data breach industry in 2019, and a “bonus” prediction by Experian’s dark web expert.

The Report lists the following data breach trends for 2019:

• Attackers will zero in on biometric hacking and expose vulnerabilities in touch ID sensors, facial recognition and passcodes.
• The next frontier of skimming will be an enterprise-wide attack on a national network of a major financial institution.
• A major wireless carrier will be attacked affecting simultaneously iPhones and Android, stealing personal information from millions of individuals and “possibly disabling all wireless communications in the United States.
• A top cloud vendor will suffer a breach, which compromises the sensitive information of hundreds of Fortune 1000 companies.
• The online gaming community will be used by cybercriminals posing as gamers to gain access to the personal data of players.

And the dark web prediction? Since so much of our personal data is available online, and the ease of cybercriminals to hack, the next risk is that hackers will “use more multi-vector attacks against your broader digital identity.” This means that the hackers will hijack cell phones and internet services, so that multi-factor authentication that rely on text messages, phone calls or emails will send pin codes to the hacker who has hijacked consumer devices.

And my family and friends think I am wicked paranoid about data privacy and security…now you see why.

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