Over time, cybersecurity is one of the most crucial aspects for every business. And cybersecurity preparedness is something that cannot be neglected. You can’t wait for an actual crisis to occur. This is an urgent need for organizations to improve cybersecurity awareness among their staff and education them to better prepare against an inevitable cybersecurity event.
This ‘new normal’ with remote work practices is already a covetable situation for cybercriminals, and that make cybersecurity more challenging to organizations.
Here are some of the critical cybersecurity trends that can be protective for companies in the coming year. As 2022 is already at the doorstep, let’s see how you can prepare your organization to be ready to deal with cybersecurity challenges in 2022.
1. Ransomware
The number of ransomware attacks has been continuously increasing for well over a year since the pandemic crisis impacted the business process and work culture. The ransomware global attack volume has increased by 151% for the first half of 2021 compared to the first half of 2020.
To prevent your organization from ransomware scourge, you need to have a proper understanding of what exactly is ransomware. How it can infect your system, and how to prevent them. Ransomware is actually a malware that encrypts sensitive files once inside a company’s network. This activity makes those files unusable, and the systems that rely on that information to run fail to function properly. So, the cybercriminals get a chance to demand a ransom in exchange for decryption.
One of the vital reasons behind this increase in ransomware attacks is the quick shift to remote work culture. Traditional on-premise operating networks are more secure and reliable compared to remote network access. Due to the abrupt incorporation of remote working, organizations don’t get time to establish reliable and secure remote access facilities without vulnerabilities. In this new work-from-anywhere world, organizations are facing trouble to seal all the vulnerabilities of their network, and malicious actors get chance slip threats through those cracks. Organizations may also miss the security patches and critical vulnerability updates, which lead to potential vulnerabilities in the network. In the case of remote working, employees often require access through a VPN, and even that can introduce a number of vulnerabilities as well.
In the case of cloud-based organizations, the security challenges can happen due to misconfigurations, insufficient credentials, and access management.
To get rid of these cybersecurity challenges, you need to create defined vulnerability programs to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities more efficiently. And, to achieve this goal, first, they need to find and understand the organization’s threat surface. Plus, they also need to find and hire the right staff who understand the basics of vulnerability management.
Additionally, organizations can also go for hiring third-party specialists (IT infrastructure consulting services) to help them map out the threat surface and identify ways to fill the cybersecurity gaps effectively.
2. Old Attacks, New Targets
For many years, cybercriminals have been using the same tricks and threats in new forms to invade and steal sensitive information from companies. In the case of cybercrime, the same type of attacks keeps happening because hackers continuously upgrade their techniques of intervention and monitor their target’s networks to identify the vulnerabilities.
One of the recent and prominent evidence of such is the T-Mobile attack in August 2021. The hacker of this cyber-attack explained that he was able to steal sensitive customer information through unprotected routers started in July for the organization. Within a very short time, he had stolen millions of files and sold many of them online by August 16th.
So, it is quite clear that regular surveillance like security log monitoring, log aggregation, and managing security logs from your connected devices are vital security features. For effective cybersecurity, logging and monitoring are some of the crucial policies that an organization should implement across its network to know about every event when it happens. Another important feature is the reduction of the time to respond—it not only minimizes the impact of a cybersecurity incident but could also discourage cybercriminals from targeting your organization in the future.
In 2022, organizations need to explore their security log monitoring and work towards improving their cybersecurity policies. As cybersecurity involves multiple complicated processes and needs an extensive budget along with a very specific skill set, it is better to consider experts to get incorporate appropriate cybersecurity measures in your organization.
3. The Human Factor
Workforces are crucial for every organization and still an organization’s weakest link. There are multiple ways your human resource can be a risk factor for your organization; not patching systems or remediating vulnerabilities, or falling victim to phishing scams, are some of the common instances. All these reasons make employee education a critical aspect of an organization’s cybersecurity efforts.
According to the latest study, about 88% of data breach incidents occur due to mistakes employees make. And, as threat actors also know this, they reapply old attacks on new targets. So, it is not enough to use expensive security solutions — organizations need to implement them correctly and keep them updated without a miss for ultimate protection. Even missing just one update can open a business up to different vulnerabilities that can grow in complexity and size over time, exposing the company to various malicious threats.
To keep your organization safe in 2022, it is expected to see an increase in efforts around employee education training to improve awareness around the manual error causing leakage or stealing of sensitive business data.
Protecting Your Organization
To keep your organization safe from cyber-attacks, you need to effectively prepare your organization against the threat of cyber-attacks, which requires increased visibility of the threat surface. This will offer insight into what vulnerabilities your organization have so you can implement measure to timely mitigate those attempts and enhance your security posture.
From increasing awareness in the field of cyber-attack attempts, their effects, and preventive measures to better educate your employees about existing threats and traps of the hackers, all these can help you to keep your organization protected from the evolving threat landscape. You can consider IT infrastructure consulting services to get help to build greater awareness among staff and create plans to build a better cybersecurity framework for your organization. You can go for services like penetration testing, social engineering and ransomware preparedness services to have a proactive approach to cybersecurity.
