Cybersecurity experts warn that these 7 emerging technologies will make it easier for hackers to do their jobs

In September, Google announced that it had achieved "quantum supremacy," meaning it built a functioning quantum computer — a feat that had been theorized but never achieved. The announcement was a major milestone in the field, but the technology is still nascent and doesn't have many practical applications yet.

Nonetheless, the announcement raised immediate concerns for security watchdogs, who say that quantum computers — which channel aberrant phenomena from quantum physics into computing power — could easily break encryption currently used in products seen as airtight, like blockchain or credit card transactions.

While quantum computers haven't been used to this end by hackers yet, experts worry that the technology could continue to advance in years to come, threatening encrypted data sets that organizations like banks protect for decades.

5G is beginning to roll out as the next generation of wireless network, promising faster wireless internet with the bandwidth to support more devices.

But security watchdogs warn that the shift to 5G could give hackers new inroads to target systems that use the network. The increased speed could make 5G devices more susceptible to DDoS attacks, which aim to flood victims' servers with traffic in order to overwhelm and shut them down, according to Security Boulevard.

The "internet of things," or networks specifically made for internet-connected devices and appliances to communicate with each other, is now used widely across industries.

As this technology becomes more common, however, hackers are increasingly finding vulnerabilities in IoT networks and using them to compromise companies' operations. In one high-profile example, hackers breached the network used by Verizon's shipping vessels and were able to track where the company was shipping its most valuable cargo.

As artificial intelligence makes leaps forward in sophistication and versatility, hackers are already using it to get around cybersecurity defenses. Hackers can use AI-driven programs to quickly scan networks to find weak points, or predictive text functions to impersonate insiders and trick targets into handing over sensitive information.

"We do imagine that there will be a time when attackers use machine learning and artificial intelligence as part of the attack. We have seen early signs of that," Nicole Egan, CEO of cybersecurity firm Darktrace, told the Wall Street Journal.

A growing number of recent data breaches came about as the result of "supply chain" hacks, wherein break into a company's software that's in turn distributed to clients.

This trend is the result of an increasing number of companies and agencies outsourcing services to third parties, which widens the range of potential victims for hackers to target. According to a recent report by cybersecurity firm Aon, the number of targets that are potentially vulnerable to supply chain hacks is growing exponentially.

Companies and government agencies are maximizing the number of operations that use internet connectivity, drawn in by the efficiency the internet brings.

But doing so comes at a security cost — with more internet connectivity, the "attack surface" that's vulnerable to hacks becomes wider, lowering an organization's defenses, according to the Aon report. If hackers compromise one internet-connected facet of an organization, it's easy for them to laterally hack other devices on the network.