Ahead in 2018: Major Data Breach, Botnet Attack, Data Trade War, Says Consultant

At least one large-scale data breach will occur in 2018 and a major botnet attack can be expected, blogged Paul Rosenzweig, founder of Red Branch Consulting. DOJ is likely to find a case where encryption was used to protect a terrorist, which will prompt Congress to take up legislation mandating back-door decryption capabilities, Rosenzweig said. Rollout of Europe's general data protection regulation in May "will have substantial negative impacts on cross-Atlantic data flows" and could trigger a "full-scale data trade war," exacerbated by the Supreme Court's U.S. v Microsoft overseas data storage case (see 1710160009), in which he expects the court will force Microsoft to repatriate data held in Ireland, with Europeans adopting reciprocal restrictions. The court is likely to decide "Americans have a privacy interest in their locational information in Carpenter v U.S. (see 1711290043), he said. Rosenzweig doesn't see any major cybersecurity legislation this Congress: "They may fiddle a bit, but Rome will continue to burn."