3 takeaways from the BlackBerry Security Summit

The BlackBerry Security Summit, hosted in New York City, touched on many security issues and solutions that can be taken. BlackBerry’s CEO, John Chen, opened the event with a general session keynote, and the day was followed by several other speakers who focused on topics ranging from automotive cybersecurity to practical governance.

Here are the top three takeaways from the event:

The cost of cyberattacks will increase
From 2016 to 2021, the cost of cyberattacks is predicted to increase from $400B to $6T in correspondence with the attack surface area increasing from $6.4B to $46B. In the last year alone, Equifax hit 143M people, Petya hit 65 countries, and WannaCry had a $4B impact.

With moves to smart cars, smart autonomous weapon systems, and smart cities, cyberattacks are only expected to expand tremendously.

Smart cars are unsecure
Over the past few decades, we went from having almost no intelligence or connectivity in the automotive industry to cars with hundreds of millions of lines of code, several sensors, and more individual computers than ever predicted. There is the potential for exploits in roughly one line out of 10,000 on average. Additionally, it’s difficult to update these systems, meaning they are expected to become more unsecure over time.

In a demonstration made, the demonstrators showed an electronic key fob under $500 and open-source software that can capture fob codes in a parking lot and unlock the car while you’re away. They showed that the GPS code could be hacked and your navigation could be rerouted by making the car think it was elsewhere.

Unstructured data breaches come in many forms
Breaches of unstructured data typically come as threats to internal business files, but can also come as external hazards. In a survey conducted of 200 U.S.-based IT professionals, only 26% reported a breach due to an external attack. Seventeen percent reported that their organization suffered a data breach due to internal bad actors such as disgruntled employees, who either obtained access to sensitive information or had it all along.

Breaches can also be caused by careless mistakes. Over a quarter of the respondents noted that they had a security hack occur because of a simple mistake such as accidental sharing of sensitive files. Additionally, 18% noted that security breaches took place due to lost, stolen, or unsecured devices.

In terms of solutions, Chen said that BlackBerry is looking to be the security-dominant answer to a “smart” market. By anticipating breaches and losses, BlackBerry can drive revenue and operate in both developed and developing markets through partners.