Newark Liberty International Airport, one of the nation’s 15 busiest airports, closed for more than an hour last Tuesday night after an unauthorized drone entered its airspace. This incident occurred less than 30 days after London’s Gatwick airport drone incursion, which closed that airport for 17 hours and cost airlines $65 million in delay and re-routing costs.

A lot happened in 2018 - especially on the cyber security side of things. We had some of the biggest data breaches in history in terms of just how many people were affected by the damage put forth by cyber criminals around the world on companies like Facebook and Marriott. 

In an effort to educate ourselves for the future, I decided to ask the experts from The Chertoff Group, a global security advisory firm that enables clients to navigate changes in security risk, technology and policy, to write out a comprehensive list of predicted cyber trends in 2019. They broke it down between cyber threats, cyber policy and cyber market. 

It’s easy to tune out advice about identity theft prevention and other threats to your personal information. That seems like someone else’s problem. That could be your money.

Marriott said last week that a hack that began four years ago had exposed the records of up to 500 million customers in its Starwood hotels reservation system. Private investigators looking into the breach have found hacking tools, techniques and procedures previously used in attacks attributed to Chinese hackers, said three sources who were not authorized to discuss the company’s private probe into the attack.

Marriott said last week that a hack that began four years ago had exposed the records of up to 500 million customers in its Starwood hotels reservation system. Private investigators looking into the breach have found hacking tools, techniques and procedures previously used in attacks attributed to Chinese hackers, said three sources who were not authorized to discuss the company’s private probe into the attack.

An unauthorized user accessed the personal information of as many as 2.65 million Atrium Health patients in September after getting into the systems of one of Atrium's third-party vendors. While the user accessed Atrium Health information in databases of the vendor, AccuDoc Solutions, they did not download or remove the information, which included addresses, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers but not medical records or financial data.

A former top cyber official at the FBI involved in the 2015 San Bernadino shooter investigation said he does not believe the Department of Justice needs weaker laws around encryption to do its job and that doing so would result in unacceptable collateral damage to industry and data security.

Online shopping will continue to dominate the way shoppers procure gifts for friends, family and the like this holiday season. According to data from Salesforce, e-Commerce revenue is expected to grow 13 percent in 2018 over the previous year with mobile devices accounting for 46 percent of purchases, 44 percent on desktop computers and nine percent for tablets.

Security firms are warning consumers about an uptick in holiday cyber threats, cautioning online shoppers to watch which sites and links they click on during the upcoming holiday season. While cyber crime normally spikes during the holidays, particularly as more Americans choose to buy from online retailers, researchers from several prominent security firms are flagging new tactics that could come up this season.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are at hand, which means retailers have been working extra hard behind the scenes to ensure their websites and security-savvy customers are well-protected from the cyber Grinches. Indeed, 50% of 2,011 US consumers recently surveyed by Sophos said they are very concerned about getting hacked and would not buy from a retailer that has been in the news for not protecting personal information either online or in-store. Another 32% said they are somewhat concerned and would consider an alternative company to buy from instead.