Top Cybersecurity Predictions for 2021

As the novel Covid-19 pandemic emerges globally, the organizations have ratified safety measures to ensure social distancing by shifting to work from home. It amplified the problem of protecting proprietary information. This assures business continuity but threatens the security of the company.

Remote work brings further cybersecurity provocations as employees log on through their home networks or with personal devices that might not be as secure as office environments. Cybercriminals are also targeting the cloud, which companies are relying on to help expedite remote work.

Remote Workers Are Soft Targets

Apart from technical infringements, the major risk prevails within human creation itself. Most employees are not habitual to working from home and are confounded by distractions, neglecting to secure devices against prescribed use. Moreover, they simply do not understand whom to contact if something odd happens. As a result, they are in higher jeopardy of becoming sufferers of cyber-attacks, whether it is a typical spiteful email coming with a malware load or a simple data loss by family members using the tools just for a fast lookup on the internet.

Even companies that were earlier set up to encourage remote operation may strive to manage it on such a scale, and that is a situation in which cybercriminals will prosper. This problem highlights the importance of humans in the digital world. Both employees and managers are required to understand the hazards, their organizations' strategies and procedures for controlling them, and how to remediate issues if/when they happen.

Digital assets now expand across many soft spots, rather than a handful of centralized tougher ones. Frustrated and isolated from co-workers, remote workers are more obvious targets for cyberattacks.

Phishing/BEC Attacks

With the recent development and changing of security parameters, what are we going to see in terms of the ongoing infliction of phishing attacks? In all their programs, be it company-originated emails, targeted business email compromise (BEC) attacks, or the newest addition to the social engineering world, the vishing (voice phishing) attack — this vector is here to stay. So what are you going to do about it as your organizations begin seeping back into the office later in the year?

Getting the basics right is the vital factor that several in the security world let slide in support of choosing the latest and glistening piece of AI-based technology. No matter how useful your machine learning-powered filters are, there is no stopping a well-crafted, sweetly delivered, and link-free email from making its approach into some tired employee’s inbox.

It is critical to stop these attacks before their inception. Security education, training, and awareness (SETA) is an answer to it. There is simply no effective alternative to counter a human intruder using social engineering tactics than to have a workforce guided in emotional mentality and ready to detect the red flags. Targeted education drives give your people instinctive senses that will creep at the sight of that phishing email and know whom to warn about its presence. There is no better protection for these attacks than to freeze them before they commence.

5G Sector

The upgraded generation of connectivity through mobile and internet, 5G, is innovative and obscure. 5G will have an unprecedented influence on telecommunication. It is also a platform for technological improvements in areas such as defense facilities, intelligent power grids, and smart cities. Surely, 5G needs a higher level of protection.

You wouldn't be wrong if you suggested that hackers are already struggling to detect vulnerabilities and blind spots to withdraw information. We are also observing increased large-scale DDoS attacks and difficulties in defending complex networks of connected devices. It can result in a complete network breakdown if one device gets compromised. Acknowledging all this, it is time for organizations to select zero-trust network models. 

Continued IoT Adoption 

IoT attacks are on the rise, with malware targeting IoT devices up 50% from the previous year. Most of these attacks were against user devices and, with more people working from home for the foreseeable future, there is far more danger lurking than ever before. We have already observed some discomforting IoT hacks varying from smart home systems to baby monitors. The fact, however, is that hackers frequently target consumers’ related devices in an attempt to infiltrate corporate networks. With a large number of people working from home, security teams need to be concerned about the company-issued laptops and the danger a simple act of ignorance can cause.

Stern Prediction for Cloud Service Attacks

Another COVID-related trend is the extended migration of data and services to the cloud. Again, as organizations were in a haste to assure business continuity throughout the pandemic, many prioritized employee potency over security. While that may have been the right decision at the time, companies now need to analyze the modifications made in 2020. They must assure that security is prioritized for the year 2021. We’ve seen various attacks occurring because companies ignored to lock down cloud storage and databases, left credentials obtainable in source code, or failed to patch systems or maintain healthy security hygiene in virtual machines and containers. Since more bad actors catch on to these errors, expect to see cloud service attacks rise.

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Cybersecurity in the Healthcare Industry

It’s been over three years since the Wannacry ransomware disrupted healthcare departments and other companies, and the healthcare sector appears to have studied its lesson. Cybersecurity in the healthcare industry has grown. Although we are still observing several ransomware attacks in the sector in many countries, governments and medical facilities are putting in more work and resources to counter cyber threats in the healthcare sector. 

Reasons why we still see cyber-attacks in the healthcare sector include: 

• Shortage of awareness in cybersecurity
• Inadequate security measures in IoT devices of the healthcare industry
• Ignoring/absence of proper consideration to the risks associate with digitalization

Why should stakeholders in the medical sector be stewed? 

• Various security researchers have identified vulnerabilities in multiple types of medical equipment
• Medical research is costly, which makes it a prime target for hackers
• Some medical reports are more valuable than credit card information
• Accessing patient information is risky since an attacker can manipulate the diagnostics, possibly resulting in major difficulties or even death

Financial Cyberthreats

Most attackers are after financial profit, and the most probable targets are local or small banks, eCommerce stores, mobile banks, and companies acquired by big banks. Financial Companies are usually going to pay the ransom than lose the valuable data.

Attackers have prepared artistic ways to attack, including ATM malware and digital fingerprints black markets. Most of the time, cybercriminals get success in stealing card information and withdrawing credit. Mobile applications-based financing and digital banking applications have become a popular, soft, and easy target, and most of them are not developed for major breaches as they need basic security for users. Financial companies should be qualified to put in the effort, research, and invest in a fraud counter tool before executing any modern technology and applications. 

Vaccine Ruiner

Cybercriminals could plan to set vaccine drive and intentionally collect and steal a lot of money by manipulating or crippling vaccine administration efforts. Competitor nation-states can also use cybercriminals to stop or create hurdles in the recovery from the Covid-19 virus. Now, the vaccine pipeline is as essential a channel as much of our other critical infrastructure.

Once again, threat actors in this globally exceptional situation are very motivated and well-resourced. Also, the latest versions of ransomware are faster, smarter, and more enigmatic than before. Attackers are looking to refuse access to data and critical computing resources, either short-term for ransom payment or as long as possible to attack the rollout.

Vaccine Cyber Burglars

The most skilled attackers are antagonistic nation-states that use misinformation to slow down vaccinations, similar to destroying the vaccine pipeline explained earlier.

There are the anti-vaxxers also who are not known to function collectively but rather as a loose confederation. Their abilities would be variable but likely inexperienced, identical for the griefers and pranksters who would be looking to feed their anti-social wishes.

An essential point to know is that the anti-vaxxer movement isn't only about fear or ignorance, but also about earnings. Individuals and groups are trying to defame vaccines to sell alternative medical treatments for COVID-19.

The attackers’ aim here is to violate confidentiality by stealing data for declaration. They may alter that recorded data to help navigate the sentiments in favor of their motives. The authentic captured data helps lend reliability to any modifications they may make, again, to support their motives. The targeted assets are similar to the cyber-espionage attackers, most prominently research data, virus testing, and clinical trials that show side effects or possible vaccine problems.

Hacking the Vaccine Approval System

Many countries and the U.S. states are initiating to make online arrangements to deal with the chain and focus on vaccination procedures. Who gets the antibody first undeniably can be viewed as an incomprehensibly important issue for certain individuals. There will be a certain amount of people with a powerful urge to get immunized as quickly as possible. There have just been arraignments of individuals "cutting in line," with some presenting to $25,000 for access.

Vaccine Appointment System Attackers

The attackers would be people with hacking skills and cybercriminals looking to market vaccine access. There is a profit to earn here, but it is not as productive and smooth as other cybercrime schemes. The purpose of those attacking vaccine appointment systems would be to reduce the uprightness of the appointment system by illegal modifications or additions to the waiting list.

Increasing of Ransomware attacks 

In the past months, we have witnessed an unusual wave of ransomware attacks that cracked significant businesses and organizations across the world. The number of attacks will keep rising in 2021. Cybercriminals will use famous botnets like Trickbot to deploy their ransomware. Security specialists will also witness a dramatic accretion in the human-operated attacks that see threat performers exploiting known vulnerabilities in targeted systems to get passage to the target networks. Once obtained access to these, network operators will manually expand the ransomware. Schools, districts, and municipalities will be privileged targets of cybercriminal organizations because they have confined sources and inadequate cybersecurity protocols.

In the first quarter of 2021, an increasing amount of organizations will enable their employees to remotely access resources due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, thus expanding their area of attacks.

Most of the human-operated attacks will be targeted, ransomware speculators will precisely choose their sufferers to maximize their attempts.

The ransomware-as-a-service model will enable a network of members to design their campaign that will hit end-users and SMEs globally

Shortage of IT Professionals

The lack of adequate, qualified, and equipped cybersecurity employees is the biggest cyber risk. A report revealed by Cybersecurity Ventures in 2017, concludes that the shortage of cybersecurity experience can rise to three and a half million by 2021 from one million in 2016. The number of openings in cybersecurity within the US has gone up significantly from 209,000 in 2015. The Bureau of Labor Statistics updates us that the job announcements for hiring cybersecurity specialists have risen by 74 percent within the last five years. In keeping with this extraordinary rate, the US can have a shortage of 500,000 or more cybersecurity professionals by 2021.

By 2021, the global downfall caused by cybercrime can amount to half a dozen trillion USD, up from three trillion USD in 2015. This includes knowledge fraud, larceny of funds, lack of productivity, deprivation of rational property, larceny of individual and company knowledge, stealing of public funds, scam, post-attack injury to regular business manners, sociology inquiries, restoration, and detection of hacked knowledge and systems, and name injury. The non-profit organization for cybersecurity (ISC)² examined 3,237 specialists and revealed a report relating to publically accessible knowledge. The report denoted that most of the interviewees had a deficiency of senior/experienced cybersecurity skills. This concern even exaggerated the fear regarding the shortage of productive and adequate work resources.

Many cybersecurity professionals declared that their firms suffer moderate or severe risks because of inadequate cybersecurity personnel. Companies ought to use some policies to create a robust cybersecurity team and assure that their companies don't experience personnel shortages. Adding women in the workforce to the cybersecurity field would also help since nowadays we see many women stepping into the field. Furthermore, companies must come together and prepare the work experience and certification needs required to fill in most in-demand positions. 

Cybersecurity Hazards with Cloud Migration

The requirement for cloud computing has skyrocketed in recent years. Low cost, faster to market, improved employee potency and productivity, scalability, and flexibility are some advantageous factors causing organizations to move to the cloud. It’s not expected that organizations will lower down with their migration strategies, either. According to market evaluations, the global cloud computing market capacity is forecasted to rise from USD 272.0 billion in 2018 to USD 623.3 billion by 2023 at a CAGR of 18.0%.

Concurrently, the coronavirus pandemic has headed to a sudden increase in the cloud industry as companies have to rely on remote working.

The transformation to the cloud has produced new security difficulties, though. According to IDC, around 30% of examined companies acquired 30+ kinds of cloud services from 16 different vendors in 2019 only. This causes these organizations to become more vulnerable to cyberattacks; cybercriminals are preying upon these objects by damaging configuration errors and vulnerabilities within the applications, which usually remained undetected by the organization due to the experience gap.

Abusing Cloud Apps

According to the recent case study by IBM X-Force IRIS, cloud-based applications are the most popular path for cybercriminals for endangering cloud environments. They estimated 45% of cloud-related cyber threats in IBM’s study.

• Ransomware

Ransomware is one of the biggest cyber threats facing the cloud industry. Ransomware was deployed three times more than any other sort of malware in cloud environments, observed IBM, followed by crypto miners and botnet malware.

• Data Loss

Companies are frequently saving sensitive data in the cloud. Around 21% of portfolios uploaded to cloud-based file-sharing services carried sensitive data including intellectual property, according to IBM.

As such, cybercriminals can gain entrance to intellectual property or other personal files as a result of security breaches involving the cloud.

Data loss is one of the cloud security dangers that are difficult to prognosticate and even more difficult to manage. Data theft was the most common threat action noted by IBM in breached cloud environments outside of malware deployment over the last year.

• Malware

Malware makes its move into the cloud environment in several ways. The most popular way is via phishing emails and by taking benefit of defectively configured storage servers.

As data is continually traveling to and from the cloud, malware has a lot more opportunities to strike not only cloud infrastructure but also client infrastructure and devices.

“Malware developers have already started developing malware that incapacitates common cloud security products and designing malware that takes the advantage of the scale and coordination offered by the cloud.

• Legal/Compliance Issues

With increasing government regulations concerning data protection such as GDPR and HIPAA, staying obedient is becoming more complex.

Owing to the large-scale approachability of data on the cloud environment, it can be challenging for businesses to keep track of who can obtain the data.

Companies should always attempt to remain obedient to laws and industry regulations to evade facing massive fines and reputational damage in the outcome of a successful security incident.

API security

Application programming interfaces (APIs) have become all the storm now, with enterprise developers now dependent heavily on them to support the distribution of new products and services. That's no surprise since they enable programmers to integrate functionality from externally provided services instead of having to develop those functions themselves.

• Recognize the risks of APIs

When developers work with APIs, they concentrate on one small set of services to make that feature set as robust as possible. They lead to think inside the box. Challenges arise because now front ends and back ends are connected to a combination of components. Hackers plans outside the box, exploring ways a gateway here or there can be used for treacherous purposes.

New devices that help developers manage APIs are being developed from a diversity of sources, varying from start-ups to established vendors. “We will see more tools and vendors in the space, both for runtime security management and design/develop/test-time vulnerability detection,” writes SmartBear’s Lensman. 

• Budget time for security testing

Security testing and examination take time and money, and companies require to invest. While modern functionality drives development, about 5 percent to 10 percent of the funds should be designated and allocated to security testing.