If you’re interested in the top cyber security predictions for the year to come, then read further. Cyber-attacks have become more serious and more widespread on an international scale than ever before. What makes these cybercrimes alarming is that aside from financial losses, they can also cause damages to the reputation that is sometimes irreparable.
It doesn’t matter if you are running a small online store or you have a company poised to reach go global. It is important for you to be familiar with and prepared for the top 10 cyber security predictions and trends for 2022.
1. Healthcare Sector as the Target of Cyber Attacks
The healthcare sector has long been struggling with cyber threats but the current pandemic resulted in more concerns. As firewalls of healthcare organizations are temporarily relaxed to allow remote work of staff members, problems continue to rise day by day.
With these, it is safe to say that cyberattacks targeting the healthcare sector won’t stop anytime soon. Data breaches pose continuing threats to most health organizations, with cybercriminals targeting sensitive details about patients, employees, and businesses.
2. Concerns with Security of the Cloud
Thanks to the increasing number of cloud solutions, both small and large organizations and businesses have decided to migrate to the cloud. Unfortunately, many of today’s cloud services don’t provide secure audit logging, authentication, and encryption.
There are also some who find it hard to isolate the data of their users from those of the other tenants that share the cloud space. These are some of the main reasons why it is imperative for IT security experts to tighten overall cloud security.
Poorly configured cloud security may allow cybercriminals to bypass internal policies protecting sensitive details in the cloud database. Predictive security may be able to help identify threats even before attackers make a move.
3. Cyber Threats on Financial Services
There are cyber threats that the financial services sector faces every single day. This is on top of the fact that there are financial organizations that find it hard to keep up with the ever-increasing regulations and migration to the cloud.
The industry continues to deal with prevalent phishing attacks. Aside from emails, social media and the rest of the messaging platforms have become the new venues for phishing in today’s financial services. Data breaches and malware attacks also continue to be common threats that banks, asset managers, and insurance companies have to deal with.
4. A Matter of Compliance to GDPR
GDPR or general data protection regulation is considered as one of the most crucial developments in the regulation of data privacy in countries that are part of the European Union.
However, despite originating in the EU, all companies that market their services or goods to residents of the EU nations must adhere to the latest regulation no matter where they are in the world. This only shows that GDPR has a significant effect on requirements for global data protection.
5. Geo-Targeted Phishing Attacks
Phishing attacks have now become the most invasive security threat to the IT industry and many still become the unfortunate victims of phishing emails. With cybercriminals now using more sophisticated methods to develop well-executed attacks on business email compromise, malicious URLs and phishing emails continue to be prevalent online. The only difference is that now, they have become more personalized, highly localized, and geo-targeted.
6. The Rise of Machine Learning
Machine learning or ML has a growing and more proactive role in cyber security predictions for the next decade. With the help of machine learning, cybersecurity has become simpler, more affordable, and more effective. Using an extensive database, machine learning comes up with patterns and controls them with algorithms. Through this, it can foresee active attacks and respond to them in real-time.
The technology of machine learning mainly relies on state-of-the-art and rich data to come up with effective algorithms. ML implementation gives cybersecurity systems the opportunity to learn the behaviors of cybercriminals and analyze threat patterns. This can then help prevent similar future attacks and reduce the time require for cybersecurity professionals to carry out their routine tasks.
7. Attack Vectors in the Form of Mobile Devices
As young and old alike use smartphones and other devices, cybercriminals have seen the chance of targeting mobile users, with mobile devices used as their attack vectors. Cybercriminals have been exploiting the extensive and popular use of mobile devices that people use for business and personal communications, shopping, baking, and hotel or flight bookings. Data loss, data tampering, and malware are the most common mobile attack vectors right now.
8. Higher Education Threats
The higher education sector has now made it their top priority to implement cybersecurity, particularly with the rise of remote work and online learning in times of the pandemic. Trends in higher education cybersecurity mainly involve compromised data of students.
The sector now actively promotes tighter security to protect educational institutions and their research, faculty, and student data. The good news is that institutions are also developing new security architecture including post-perimeter security on identity information, cloud access, and endpoint protection.
9. Increased Cybersecurity Awareness
With cyber threats getting more aggressive by the day, organizations and businesses are taking major steps to strengthen and tighten their security measures. Cybersecurity awareness is crucial for most establishments to prevent expensive network hacks and identity theft can damage the reputation of companies and individuals.
In addition to the use of sophisticated IT protocols and firewalls, companies have also come to realize the importance of improving the skills of their IT staff through seminars and training. This improved level of cybersecurity awareness can help ward off the onslaught of attacks and threats in the future.
10. IoT’s Vulnerability
Security concerns continue to plague many IoT devices that are prevalent in the market these days. The computing devices used in IoT products let them receive and send data online. It can pose significant security attacks to users and expose them to several cyberattacks such as hijacked or DoS devices. With IoT connecting the physical world and virtual space, intrusions to homes just add to the list of the terrifying potential threats that IoT can bring forth.
Conclusion
It is never easy and simple to predict the exact paths that these cyber threats and attacks will take. But by knowing the possible trends, individuals and companies alike can anticipate and prepare for these issues way before they kick in.
Do you think of any other cyber security predictions we could add? Please comment below and feel free to share this article around! We wish you a happy, healthy, and safe 2022!