What to expect from the cyber threat landscape of 2023

What to expect from the cyber threat landscape of 2023

30 Ara 2022

6 dk okuma süresi

The conversation about cyber security has recently moved from the IT department to the board room. It has become a priority at every organizational level as cyberattacks have increased and the consequences of regulatory and customer trust loss have become more severe. Organizations face new and more advanced cyber threats from malicious actors, which could jeopardize their security posture. There are several trends to watch out for as 2023 draws closer.

New mobile blind spots

Personal communication channels will play a more important role in the attack vectors that bad actors devise to target enterprises. Once a certain user has been hacked, bad actors can make lateral moves to reach the enterprise systems. Furthermore, because email is currently partially protected, fraudsters are focusing increasingly on these other communication channels where they have considerably higher success rates.

In the new hybrid workforce, employee personal data represents the biggest security posture weaknesses. As companies adopt new channels for private messaging, communications, and collaboration, these blind spots are becoming more obvious. Bad actors are executing attacks against employees through less secure communication channels like WhatsApp, Gmail, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, and gaming. Then, all left is to use its external footing to pierce the organization laterally.

Additionally, a large blind spot has emerged as more people simultaneously use a single device for both personal and professional purposes. This is likely to accelerate in the upcoming year. The question, "how can I confirm that you are the person I think I am interacting with?" is at the center of it all.

Nowadays, the human factor is the biggest cybersecurity threat to any organization. Attacks on people will continue to rise due to human weakness, distraction, and difficulty recognizing malevolent threats.

Security investments will drive the IT spending

As the economy becomes tighter, we should generally anticipate a decline in overall IT spending. Nevertheless, despite the downturn, investment in security is likely to remain at its current levels to reduce the dangers posed by evolving threats.

Ransomware is one of the biggest security issues and is still a board-level discussion. When it comes to ransomware, the question is not if it will happen but when. Additional proactive mitigating controls must be implemented to be ready for an attack before it happens. In fact, phishing at the user level is the leading cause of ransomware. Ransomware risk can be significantly decreased by safeguarding against spear phishing, credential theft, and business email intrusions.

The prospect of an insider threat, which is more severe during a downturn, is another crucial concern. Insider threat is the potential for an insider, such as an employee, to cause harm using their privileged access or deep understanding of an organization. The integrity, confidentiality, and availability of the company, its data, people, or facilities can all be negatively affected by malicious, complacent, or unintentional actions from insiders. Before leaving their employer, angry employees may obtain access to sensitive information and take the data or credentials with them. Insider threats, however, don't always originate from employees with bad intentions; they can also result from unintended errors. The security approach should always need to verify everything and not put faith in assumptions, which is the main principle of the zero-trust approach.

Security teams should emphasize the necessity of security insurance policies and develop improved security controls. Most businesses receive nearly unlimited funding to respond to cyberattacks after they happen. However, they are given significantly smaller funding to implement preventative security measures. Being proactive is similar to eating healthily and exercising to avoid a heart attack before it occurs. And as you know, people are likely to understand their well-being’s value after losing it.

We will see more incidents of fraud and scams attempted on the personal and business sides of interactions via business email breaches and business text compromises. This can entail requesting that customers update the information on their bank accounts or dialing a toll-free number to reveal protected information. It is anticipated that these attacks will become more weaponized in the upcoming year.

Scams will abuse uncertainty

Phishing scams target senior citizens more frequently to take advantage of their relative lack of computer skills and little knowledge of this new wave of security threats. The FBI released a significant report on cryptocurrency scams that prey on the elderly as we enter a recession and an economic downturn, which will increase desperation, resulting in this trend accelerating in the upcoming year. Unfortunately, as cryptocurrency frauds from bad actors increase, more elders will fall victim to these get-rich-quick schemes.

By implementing more brand protection rules, service providers will have a greater obligation to confirm the legitimacy of campaigns on their websites. The question of "how do you check and authenticate if this is a real person, real campaign, or legitimate piece of information on the web" is relevant here again. We might even witness the emergence of new government regulations to enforce this responsibility.

Humans will remain the weakest link

Organizations that ignore the human component of security will struggle because security awareness training alone is insufficient to protect users from all kinds of sophisticated threats.

IT stacks' most vulnerable areas involve employees, business partners, and independent contractors. The human aspect of security is the main emphasis of training. However, given the sophistication of these attacks, it is impractical to expect users to identify malicious intent through training alone. Although training is important, it shouldn't be your only line of protection. Because of this, we need to include more robust artificial intelligence (AI) controls to supplement user security training. Remember that your personnel are the weakest point in your security posture and the most common attack vector.

Time to think about the metaverse

The metaverse, digital twins, and related cutting-edge technology will pose new security challenges for businesses and individual users. The validity of identities and controls will require utilizing artificial intelligence technologies.

Today, we frequently picture intense multiplayer game settings when we think of the metaverse. The metaverse will eventually penetrate almost every sphere of commerce and society besides gaming. As avatars impersonate real individuals and lure users into disclosing personal information, this new digital reality will expose users to unexpected security threats.

We already see notable attack trajectories that put consumers at risk when they open malicious files or follow harmful links. It might be a social engineering attack that launches malware or ransomware using natural language communication, a credential-harvesting ruse using a faked URL, or both. Then there are edited videos of "deep fakes" from synthetic media, which might make viewers wonder if what they see is real or fake. This pattern is also present in digital twins, which enable users to maintain physical facilities remotely in a digital setting. We should anticipate more phishing and fraud schemes using holographic techniques as the metaverse expands. People will have to oppose weaponized AI with greater AI since we can no longer tackle these complicated security concerns with the naked eye or human intuition.

Better authentication for open-source software

Blockchain can be a useful tool for verifying the identities of open-source programmers and authenticating open-source software. Organizations of all kinds are becoming increasingly dependent on open-source tools and technology. We need better validation techniques to confirm that participants in the open-source community are indeed who they claim to be in light of this development. Blockchain ledgers could eventually be used to verify the open-source contributors and support boosting public confidence in open-source platforms and applications.

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