Cyber security breaches will increase by nearly 70% over the next five years and cost firms around $5trn (£4trn) annually, up from approximately $3trn today.
That is according to a new report from Juniper Research, which said that global cyber security costs are likely to rise by around 11% every year up until 2024.
This will be driven by a growing number of fines for data breaches as regulation tightens, and lost business as companies become increasingly dependent on the digital realm.
The report also anticipates that criminals will use artificial intelligence (AI) to learn the behaviour of security systems in the same way that firms currently use it to detect abnormal activity.
Moreover, the researchers expect that the evolution of deep fakes and other AI-based techniques will play a growing part in social media cyber crime in the future.
“All businesses need to be aware of the holistic nature of cyber crime and, in turn, act holistically in their mitigation attempts,” said research author, Susan Morrow.
“As social engineering continues unabated, the use of human-centric security tactics needs to take hold in enterprise security.”
Juniper Research said that, although cyber security is increasingly becoming part of corporate culture, it is not necessarily gaining traction with system users.
As a result, the firm expects awareness training to become an increasingly important part of cyber security spending, which is forecast to grow 8% per year by 2024.
This comes after separate research found that almost a third of cyber breaches are due to employee error, with this rising to 42% in the healthcare sector.
Meanwhile, Willis Towers Watson found that 90% of cyber insurance claims are the result of some type of human error, and that just 18% are driven by an external threat.
“The simple truth is that a data compromise is more likely to come from an employee leaving a laptop on the train than from a malicious criminal hack,” former WTW global cyber risk lead, Anthony Dagostino, said.
“Employees and companies with a strong culture and cyber-aware workforce are the first line of defence against cyber risk.”
Image credit | iStock
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