The James Webb Space Telescope has already presented the world with amazing images, representing mind-boggling numbers. Billions of galaxies. Billions of lightyears away. Trillions of stars. These numbers are hard for the human mind to wrap around, especially without context.
Here’s a number that is much closer to home, but equally mind-boggling: $10 Trillion. This is how much cybercrime might cost the world by 2025. It’s a number so large we don’t even know what to do with it. To try and give it context, think about this. $10 Trillion is larger than any country’s GDP except for the US and China. This means the problem is bigger than Japan’s, UK’s, and Germany’s GDP—by a lot. This is the amount of damage that cybercrime stands to cause the world: Nearly 10% of global GDP.
What is causing this problem? What is being done to fix it? And is there any future where we don’t have a solid 10% penalty due to criminals? Let’s dive in and take a look at the key issues, and some of the most promising solutions being developed.
A Lot of Devices, A Lot of Holes
Chief among the issues we are facing might be the unmanageable growth of devices globally. We have added devices, whether they are computers, mobile devices, IoT devices, etc., at an exponential rate. At this point we have 50 billion connected devices, with IoT a major (and unprotected) contributor. And if you are trying to break into a house with 50 billion windows, odds are there will be plenty that are broken or unlocked.
Making the problem worse, this massive increase in devices has been relatively recent. This is an issue because our natural innovation cycle hasn’t had time to catch up with the entirely new strategies required to handle a massive field of IT devices, spread out far beyond the physical campuses companies are used to protecting. We simply don’t have the mindset matured to handle these types of systems, and it shows. In 2021, for example, hackers used a single password to infiltrate the Colonial Pipeline Company with a ransomware attack that caused fuel shortages across the U.S.
It’s not that companies aren’t trying. In fact, companies are spending more than ever on cybersecurity, over $260 Billion annually. Sadly, despite this the cybercriminals are gaining ground, with cybercrime increasing each year despite the growing attempts to stop it.
So with those facts, what can possibly be done? We rely too much on technology to give up, but spending more doesn’t seem to be working. Perhaps it’s what we are spending that money on that matters. Many of the strategies, products, and services we are using are meant to protect a walled castle, not a distributed network of individual devices. This core shift in thought would go a long way to protecting our more and more distributed systems.
New Tech, New Perspective
Thankfully, not all hope is lost. Along with the trends of growing devices are key innovations that, if steered toward the field of cybersecurity, could directly address the challenge of many distributed devices vs. the walled castle approach of yesteryear.
Among these innovations is Web3. It is the pinnacle of decentralization, and has been designed to thrive, rather than be at risk, in a decentralized environment. Many, many different devices are spread out globally, and through the use of smart contracts, consensus algorithms, and a blockchain, the devices create more than the sum of their parts. While not perfect on its own (we see Web3 hacks on blockchains regularly), it begins to create what is known as a “cybersecurity mesh”, built to protect distributed systems.
Along with a Web3 structure, the ideal cybersecurity mesh would be fully independent and autonomous. No humans required for the system to run perpetually. This is certainly a challenge, but a number of organizations are seeing amazing results in their development efforts. With humans as the greatest risk to IT security, this alone is a major step.
The use of AI in security is a growing and promising option as well. New AI models are able to tease out and detect anomalies, risks, and threats that humans simply can’t see, at speeds humans simply can’t match. This will continue to see innovations at a near constant rate.
What about scalability? It’s not enough to be able to handle a network of X devices. We need a system that actually gets better the more devices are added. While this seems counter-intuitive, it too is showing promise. Actually, one of the leaders in this field, Naoris Protocol, is basing their entire platform around this premise. To solve the problem, they have developed a unique consensus mechanism called Distributed Proof of Security (dPoSec), whereby the nodes in the network each protect and validate each other continuously, increasing the amount of coverage, security checks, and the ability to quickly identify bad actors trying to access the system. In part, what makes their system especially interesting is the use of AI swarm methodologies, a new field being developed that allows a large group of agents to autonomously interact and make key decisions. For Naoris, utilizing AI swarm techniques for a distributed system of nodes is a match made in heaven. A Web3 network already acts like a swarm in many ways, so implementing the AI methodology is ideal, effective, autonomous, and scales indefinitely.
Looking Ahead
Things are certainly bleak right now, with cybercriminals winning the battle against companies spending massive amounts to protect themselves. However, not all is lost. With a genuine focus shifting to protecting distributed systems (catching up with the way our systems currently operating), we might just be able to prevent a 2025 that costs us $10 Trillion in damages.
