Cheaters always have been a fact in ET, even with cheatprotection. It's hard to fully clean them and of course, removing all kinds of protection will make things easier for cheaters. However, I always found that the best cheatprotection was the server admin and his crew himself (themselves).
Personally, I don't think there will be a major climb in cheating and if there is - TB is always there to take measures
Lastly, thanks for your support. We have a great community and we wish (and hope) to continue to return the favour
EDIT
UPDATE:
With the PB auth server offline no new GUID's will be generated and current ones will not have the age info anymore which effectively means this is the end of the line for PBBans support in ET.
Without the PB auth server the Hub will not add new bans.