Cisco predicts massive growth in advanced malicious attacks

The Cisco 2014 Annual Security Report, released today, reveals that threats designed to take advantage of users’ trust in systems, applications and personal networks have reached startling levels. According to the report, a worldwide shortage of nearly a million skilled security professionals is impacting organizations’ abilities to monitor and secure networks, while overall vulnerabilities and threats reached their highest levels since 2000.

The exponential growth for mobile and cloud technologies over the last few years matched by a gap in skilled security professionals to manage these platforms is providing cyber criminals with unimaginable opportunities, based on the Cisco‘s 2014 Annual Security Report. Despite ever-present and rampant headlines about security, from somewhat simple phishing to wide-scale attacks as seen with Target, Cisco researchers still suggest that we could be facing “unprecedented growth” for advanced malicious attacks in the coming year.