Cyber Security Trends to Look for in 2022/2023

• saka
• May 11, 2022
• No Comments

Last updated: Sep 9, 2022

Cyberattacks and cyberthreats are at a continuously growing rate, leading to immense amounts of financial losses for users and companies, leaving them in very challenging situations. Besides the financial cost that these attacks have on individuals and businesses, there are also large amounts of reputation damage. Data and sensitive information is compromised when a cyber attack occurs, putting many businesses and individuals in an uncomfortable situation. Most cyberattacks are aimed towards small businesses, as these are the types of corporations with less funds in order to protect and safeguard themselves. These small organizations might also not realize the various risks that they could be facing as they are just about to enter the working world. Most common cyber attacks in the year 2020 in the US were phishing, network intrusion, inadvertent disclosure, stolen devices or records and system misconfiguration. 

There are various cyber security trends that people should look out for in this year 2022 as well as next year, 2023. 

User Awareness:

• Cyber threats are becoming more and more alarming as the days go on. A step to take in order to prevent certain attacks is to increase awareness surrounding various attacks.
• Having awareness surrounding cybersecurity and the risks, is imperative in order to prevent any major costly attacks or attacks on an individual or companies reputation.
• Besides ensuring proper firewalls or advanced IT protocols, it is also vital for companies to now educate their IT personnel with the facts surrounding this issue, as well as ways to avoid any risks. It is not only the IT personnel who should be taught these tools, but every person in an organization as it is very easy for anyone to fall victim to those conducting these cyber-attacks.
• This can be done via seminars or workshops. Individuals (and employees at organizations) are often unaware of the various cyberattack methods.
• They often fall victim to these attacks, for example, not being able to distinguish the difference between a legitimate email and a phishing email and thus will click on the links.
• This could possibly give the hackers full range to exploit an organization, and gain unauthorized access to their data and sensitive information.
• Thus, increasing cybersecurity awareness and cybersecurity training will help avoid these attacks. It is imperative for organizations to equip their employees with the necessary tools and knowledge surrounding these attacks or breaches. 

Fun fact: 1 in 25 people will click on fraudulent emails and thus fall victim to cyber attacks.

Various attacks that can happen on the Healthcare Sector

• Health care workers in the past have not always used technology to store files and thus some of them might not be tech-savvy and know the risks that they take by making their files all online.
• The healthcare sector holds lots of private and sensitive information for individuals all around the world, and thus if they were to fall victim to a type of cyberattack, they would be exposing many individuals and would be faced with detrimental consequences.
• Thus, this has previously led health care organizations, for example hospitals and private practices to invest more money, time and effort into their cybersecurity protocols. Cyberattacks are extremely common within the healthcare sector.
• Between the years 2015-2019, more than 150 million healthcare records were accessed by unauthorized individuals and exposed. Since this, healthcare institutions tightened their protocols on cybersecurity. The problem arose in 2020 when the Coronavirus outbreak began.
• Healthcare institutions became more lax with their firewall rules as more and more employees began working from home. Many of these institutions additionally needed to educate themselves and broaden their knowledge surrounding telehealth.
• Most of these institutions bypassed some of their previous existing security protocols in order to keep up with the Covid-19 Pandemic.
• As we move back into our new “normal” world, it is extremely imperative that healthcare institutions take the necessary protocols in order to rebuild their cyber security protocols, in order to protect all patients’ sensitive information. 

Machine Learning

• Within the realm of cybersecurity, there has been an increased amount of machine learning (ML).
• By utilizing machine learning, organizations can improve their cybersecurity methods in a much simpler and more effective manner.
• At the same time, it is also less expensive for them.
• When implementing it within a large set of data, machine learning generates patterns and at the same time can control and exploit them with various different algorithms.
• This means that machine learning is one step ahead and counteracts attacks in real-time.
• Machine learning depends on sophisticated data in order to allow for effective and efficient algorithms. The data it relies on needs to be smart enough to represent any sort of potential scenario that might occur.
• Machine learning allows cybersecurity systems to become aware of hacker’s behaviors and thus will help prevent any future attacks, as well as reducing the time it would take experts in cyberattacks to perform the necessary task.  

Cloud security and their risks

• In today’s times, it is extremely common for businesses to begin to mitigate the cloud.
• However, the problem arises when it comes to the security over these cloud services.
• Most of them do not have secure encryption, authentication or audit logging.
• Some businesses are also unsuccessful in keeping user data and other tenants in the sharing space of the cloud separate. Thus it is imperative that these IT security professionals expand their knowledge and tighten their cloud security.
• If cloud security has been poorly configured, cyber criminals and hackers are able to bypass internal policies that would usually safeguard private information within the cloud database.
• Security in the cloud is now becoming more and more predictive in order to protect users from hackers and various cyber attacks.
• Predictive security is progressing and thus becoming more effective at identifying threats before a hacker can progress in his/her attack.
• Predictive security pinpoints attacks that learn to move through endpoint security.
• Thus it is imperative that organizations are utilizing predictive security if they are storing their data in the cloud in order to prevent future issues.

There have been a couple of new advancements in cloud security in the recent years, and one of them includes the cloud security architecture called “Zero Trust”. This architecture functions as if a network has been comprised already in one way or another. All users are granted authorization and access into all the applications and data. Zero Trust architecture covers a lot of bases for the modern-day challenges businesses and individuals would be facing, following the about of remote and hybrid environments.

The rise of automotive hacking:

• In the times we are living in, motorized vehicles often have automated software, allowing for cruise control, engine timing, airbags, automatic door lock as well as improved systems allowing for driver assistance.
• Within these vehicles, there is also Bluetooth, allowing for communications.
• This opens a door to cyberattacks and various threats from hackers.
• In the year 2022, it is expected that hackers will be able to gain control over the vehicles, or use the microphones to eavesdrop on conversations.
• Thus when buying these new automated cars, it is imperative to be aware of the various risks that come along with it.

Mobile devices as attack vectors:

• In today’s times, more than half of the population owns and uses mobile devices and most of the ecommerce software is available through these mobile platforms.
• Hackers view this as a chance to conduct a cyber attack on mobile users.
• People use their smart mobile devices for all purposes, be it business or personal. For example, we shop online, we have online banking apps, book flights online as well as hotel bookings.
  • We save our passwords and remain logged in on these devices, thus making it easier to get hacked.
• In 2019, 70% of any fraudulent transactions were conducted through mobile channels and thus it is imperative mobile users become aware of this risk and try to reduce it as much as possible by remaining logged out of applications and avoid conducting too many actions from their mobile devices. 
• Additionally, mobile devices are used by individuals of all ages and the older generation might fall victim to these attackers very easily as they might not be up to date with the various threats.
• It is essential that they are informed as much as possible in order to avoid running into any issues.

Potential risks of Artificial Intelligence (AI):

• Within most market segments, AI technology is being introduced. AI is able to act against cyber threats by highlighting patterns of behavior and alerting systems that there is something unusual happening.
• AI has a sort of predictive ability that assists organizations in the avoidance of cyber attacks.This is beneficial in systems that need to keep up with many different events happening at once, which is often where cyberattacks are likely to attack.
• The setback with this security is that cybercriminals are aware of the working of AI and this allows for new threats from technologies such as machine learning.
• However, it can still be noted that most businesses understand AI to be imperative when it comes to identifying and counteracting various cyber threats.

Additional threats to Higher Educational facilities

• Since the onset of the pandemic, everyone around the world, including educational facilities have had to make the switch to online learning and/or remote work (working from home).
• As a result of this, more and more educational institutions are falling prey to various attacks conducted by hackers.
• A greater amount of awareness over security protocols is important in order to protect the students, teachers and data within these places. 

Increased threat of ransomware on business and individuals

• Following the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increased amount of usage of the online world as well as digital environments.
• Ransomware occurs by infecting a device with a type of “virus” that will lock people out of their devices and sensitive files.
• The hackers will threaten to expose, exploit or destroy the data if some sort of ransom is not paid. These demands can be very costly, putting organizations in a financially difficult situation.
• Ransomware is often conducted through phishing attacks, tempting individuals to click on dangerous links or open tabs that are not secure. These links look totally legitimate, leading individuals to fall victim to the attacks.
• Ransomeware is becoming more and more sophisticated as the years go on, in fact there is now the ability for cybercriminals to subscribe to program called “Ransomware-as-a-service”, which enables these attackers to deploy previously developed ransomware methods in order to generate attacks in order for them to get some sort of ransom payment.
  • Ransomware as a service (RaaS) is extremely affordable, meaning it is easily available for those “new” or “small” cybercriminals, only resulting in more and more cyber-attacks on a daily basis.
• In a survey conducted in 2021, 1,263 IT and cyber professionals were recruited to be part of it. Out of all of these cyber professionals, 66% noted that their businesses had endured some sort of ransomware attack, resulting in a loss of large amounts of revenue for their organizations.
• The way this can be avoided is education.
• Employees and individuals need to be taught about the dangers of these types of attacks and also what sort of things to look out for.
• They need to know that even if links or tabs look reputable or legitimate, it is not always the case and if they are unsure about something, it is best they seek further advice and conformation.
• By learning about these threats further, individuals will be able to protect themselves and their businesses.  

Common configuration Mistakes:

• In today’s world, even the most professional platforms are likely to have some sort of software error. At the end of the day, we are all human and it is not 100% that everything is created properly.
• Following the consequences of the pandemic, individuals have been facing additional social issues and stress, resulting in them making more and more thoughtless errors. This enables more cybercriminals to exploit sensitive information.
• Post COVID, many people have suffered from various mental health ailments, which have had a direct effect on their work performance on a day-to-day basis.
• This means that more and more IT experts will not be installing impenetrable cybersecurity machinery, resulting in future issues for the organization.
• It is important to give your employees the necessary mental and psychological support that they might need as well as ensuring that they take the necessary rest breaks in order to avoid poor work performance and potential cyberattacks on their organizations.

Poor Data Management:

• In order to secure your data and manage it effectively, it is very necessary to ensure that the data is stored in a well-organized organization system.
• Data created and generated by consumers increases twice as much every four years, however, more often than not, that new data is never really analyzed.
• These large amounts of unanalyzed data leads to immense amounts of miscommunication, leaving data and private information exposed and thus easily hacked into by cybercriminals.
• These breaches land up costing organizations and individuals up to millions and millions of dollars and thus needs to be avoided. In 2022, professionals believe that we will see a large move from “big data” – which is data that has lots of variety to something called the “right data” placing huge amounts of emphasis of ensuring that organizations will only secure and safeguard the data that they need and that which is beneficial and important to them.
• Separating “right data” from the data that is not needed, organizations will be depending on automated infrastructure and this unfortunately might lead to other future issues and this needs to be taken into consideration.
• An example of one of these automated programs is spiderwebs.

The world we are living in is increasing in terms of modernization and individuals are becoming smarter and smarter as the days go on. This leaves organizations and individuals in a vulnerable situation, with the chance that their data or their private information might be leaked or might land up in the hands of the wrong kinds of people. It is extremely necessary that organizations and individuals take all the necessary steps in order to protect themselves as well as avoiding any costly consequences in the future.