None of us are safe it seems. Cyber criminals attack without any consideration of our corporate or individual status in life. It is cruel and it is systematic. And we know it is only going to get worse.

But it seems it is not only we can’t trust the criminals, we can’t seem to even trust the victims. What could Equifax done to prevent the intrusion? Why did Uber hid their breach for a full year?

Companies are going to proved stronger authentication which will be slightly inconvenient for us all. Two factor authentication is gaining traction. While it can slow a transaction down a minute or so, it will be worth it. At least I hope so.

And what about our partners, suppliers and service providers. Should we trust them? Probably not. We are going to see more security audits. Awareness will increase that our greatest vulnerability may be the people we trusted the most historically. Ugh!

The U.S. government has banned the use of Kaspersky software in government agencies because it believes the risk of Russian influence to compromise the software too high. Similar actions by other countries are likely in 2018. 

Other countries have shown similar nationalistic tendencies such as China and its recently passed, far-reaching cybersecurity law that requires access to vendor source code. We predict that the U.S. Executive Branch will show similar tendencies and direct government agencies to exercise procurement preference for vendors with development and manufacturing in the U.S. or allied countries,” says PAS Global’s Habibi.

The environment of mistrust will present opportunities for companies that can show genuine concern for protecting data and that they have proper security infrastructure in place. In other words, earned trust becomes an asset when consumers and other organizations are willing to do business with you because they feel secure doing so.