Joydeep Dey

Cybersecurity Threats & Trends in 2021… and Beyond This article summarizes the views & opinions of experts who have looked back at some key aspects that shaped Cybersecurity during the year of the pandemic and made some important predictions. While organizations are increasingly aware of the importance of Cybersecurity, most are struggling to define and implement the required security measures. It’s not surprising that privacy regulators have a tough time to catch the cybercriminals who breach cyber networks to siphon off private data. Failed Cybersecurity protocols form the crux of data breaches and ransom ware attacks. Massive development in technology has its flip side as well, and equal malignant effects are seen in the other side of the law where cybercriminals are evolving their tactics to overweigh the impact of Cybersecurity investments by the businesses. As technology evolves, so does the Cyberthreat landscape that organizations must navigate. In fact, it is estimated that the cyber threat globally slows the pace of technology innovation by as much as USD 3 trillion in lost economic value in 2020. The year 2020 saw the global pandemic of COVID-19 making the entire world switch to remote working, shaking up IT security practices and corporate standards that workers and businesses have been accustomed to. The overnight shift to remote working has been critical to many organizations. Cybercriminals have pounced on the innate vulnerabilities of dispersed workforces and their IT systems, looking for gaps to exploit. While the world remains in the grip of the virus; making projections into the future is as hard as ever. But if there is something we know, is that cyber attacks have evolved and spiked – and the need to safeguard organizations against threats is an absolute must. The trends that are likely to shape the Cybersecurity landscape in the coming years could range from data breaches & cloud issues and IT security staff shortages to security automation & integration. With increasing awareness among businesses, 2021 will see an increase in their spending on Cybersecurity. There will also be a rising demand for more security experts across geographies. The demand will far exceed the supply of qualified experts, leading to a widening skill gap, which will be filled with automation, SaaS vendors and technological solutions to meet this challenge. Here are some cyber security predictions made by experts, based on the latest trends in IT security: The Rising Number of Data Breaches & Data Privacy Concerns The rising number of data breaches make it tough for businesses to ignore data privacy concerns. Data breaches continue to be reported as the biggest Cybersecurity concern, and this is likely to continue for as long as personal data remains a valuable black market commodity. Ensuring data privacy, and especially the security of personal data, is likely to remain top of mind for organizations. The usage of third-party data for business gains must fall under strict regulations. Individuals must know how their data will be used, and they must have an option to forbid sharing their data. Data encryption is of prime importance. Companies have to inform if there has been any public data breach within a stipulated time. With web application flaws being a leading source of data breaches, ensuring web application security has become a top priority for all organizations. Increase in Cloud Adoption and Increased Thrust in Infrastructure Security Though global businesses have been migrating to the cloud before the crisis, the Coronavirus pandemic acted as a catalyst for the same. As remote work and online collaboration intensified during the pandemic, cloud adoption has emerged as an ally for enterprises to ensure business continuity. The rise in cloud adoption means an increase in thrust in infrastructure security. The increasing confidence into public, private and hybrid data cloud paves way for new challenges. As business processes, infrastructure, and data are increasingly moved to the cloud, protecting information and critical infrastructure requires completely new approaches to enterprise security. Cloud-based security threats, including misconfigured cloud storage, reduced visibility and control, incomplete data deletion, and vulnerable cloud-apps, will continue to disrupt businesses in the future ahead, with organizations struggling to maintain control of critical data and ensure realtime threat intelligence. Mobile Devices as Major Cybersecurity Risk Covid-19 has let businesses to allow employees to use their devices for work. The concept of BringYour-Own-Device (BYOD) is encouraged to minimize costs and increase operational productivity by elevating employee flexibility through remote work and leveraging the gig economy. The number of mobile devices used by employees continues to rise, as does the amount of business data stored on these devices. While the direct business impact of mobile malware is low, we can expect an increase in the number of data breaches related to mobile device use and misuse. Every device used to access company systems is yet another endpoint to secure, so one way of reducing risk is to provide access via a secure web application infrastructure with real-time vulnerability management. The Impact of Automation & AI Integration Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are bringing machine learning technologies into more and more products in all market segments, including Cybersecurity. Deep learning algorithms are being used for face detection, natural language processing, and threat detection. However, AI is also being weaponized by Cybercriminals to develop increasingly sophisticated malware and attack methods, requiring organizations to deploy advanced heuristic solutions rather than relying on known vulnerability and attack signatures. As Cyber-attacks continue to grow in intensity and frequency, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is set to help under-resourced security teams to stay ahead of the threats. By analyzing massive quantities of risk data from structured and unstructured resources, AI provides threat intelligence, reducing the time the security team takes to make critical decisions and respond to remediate the threat. Cybersecurity Threats connected with IoT devices In the race to deliver new products and technologies, security is seldom the first consideration, so it’s no surprise that the booming IoT (Internet of Things) space has brought a wealth of security blunders. Hard-coded credentials, insecure wireless communication, unencrypted personal data, unverified firmware updates, vulnerable web interfaces – the list goes on. Compromised IoT devices such as routers and NAS servers can provide access to communications and data, serve as points of entry for further attacks, or act as DDoS attack drones, while home automation products and wearables can be used to steal personally identifiable information and other data useful to criminals. Data from sensors are making the Internet of Things more worthwhile. Multiple research reports say that Cyber-attack traffic has seen a 3-fold increase to rise to nearly 3.0 billion events. Expect more of hardcoded passwords, non-encrypted personal data, updates of software and firmware form unverified sources, issues related to wireless communication security and more. All of these are actual threats connected with IoT devices placed at home, public place, or enterprise. Increased Impact of Internal & External Cyber-attacks A recent survey tells that 34% of cyber-attacks last year were misdeeds of internal employees. Surprisingly, employees are increasingly getting involved in data leaks intentionally or unintentionally. Businesses must brace for USB drives of their staff that take away massive information to help fraudsters with the attack or follow suspicious links attached to emails. Advanced persistent threats backed by nation-state actors are now a major part of the global security landscape. Cybercriminals unofficially supported by the state can execute DDoS attacks, cause high-profile data breaches, steal political and industrial secrets, spread misinformation, influence global opinion and events, and silence unfavorable voices. As political tensions grow, we can expect these activities to escalate – and maintaining security in the face of advanced, globally distributed attackers with access to zero-day exploits will require big business and government organizations to deploy equally advanced solutions to detect and eliminate known and emerging vulnerabilities. Phishing Threats and Ransomware Attacks Phishing attacks remain an effective method of stealing credentials and identities, distributing malware, eliciting fraudulent payments, cryptojacking (cryptocurrency mining) and so on, and the threat is not going away any year soon. The same goes for ransomware attacks, which continue to provide a solid source of income for international cybercrime. Effective protection requires not just proper Cybersecurity training for all employees and business partners, but also in-depth security and vulnerability management to prevent attackers from obtaining confidential information used in phishing attempts. The Demand for Cybersecurity Professionals and the Rising Skills Gap The demand for Cybersecurity professionals continues to exceed supply, even though security teams have to deal with more threats than ever. With as many as two-thirds of the organizations worldwide reporting a shortage of IT security staff, automated security tools such as online vulnerability management solutions are fast becoming essential to maintaining a good security posture. Modern products can allow even a small team to efficiently secure multiple websites and web applications, providing a technological solution to pressing recruitment problems. A Growing Awareness of the Importance of Cybersecurity With digital transformation ongoing in many organizations, awareness of Cybersecurity challenges continues to grow not just for major enterprises but also for small businesses. More and more businesses are coming to realize that having an effective Cybersecurity strategy and cyber incident response plan is a necessity, not a luxury. Information security training is becoming commonplace for all staff to improve cyber-hygiene and maintain a solid security posture on all levels of the organization. Security is also gaining a permanent place in the software development lifecycle, with SecDevOps/DevSecOps processes to integrate security at all stages of development. Investments for Security & Cyber Insurance With increasing awareness among businesses, 2021 will see an increase in their spending on Cybersecurity. There will also be a rising demand for more security experts across geographies. The demand will far exceed the supply of qualified experts, leading to a widening skill gap, which will be filled with automation, SaaS vendors and technological solutions to meet this challenge. To protect against the cyber-attacks, a cyber insurance policy is imperative to help businesses mitigate financial risks from cyber-attacks. According to the report by PWC, some of the US companies have already bought some type of cyber risk insurance and many are expected to follow suit.