What are the Emerging Cybersecurity Trends in 2021?
The fact that the technological changes constantly isn't something new but it's definitely been elevated during the last year. The term "disruption" is a good description of the experience of numerous businesses in the COVID-19 era. Nobody could have anticipated its impact on technology, business and cybersecurity. In this article, we'll examine the new threat landscape that has emerged from COVID-19, and the cybersecurity trends that are most at risk in 2021 and beyond. www.webroot.com/safe
- Impact of Remote Work: New Threats and Solutions
It's not a surprise that COVID-19 and its resultant shift to remote working has had major implications in the field of cybersecurity. Many of them involved insecure cloud migrations, as well as rapid purchase of IT products and services to support an increasingly remote work environment. To maintain business operations numerous companies overstepped the normal security measures , or bypassed these altogether, resulting in new levels of risk and vulnerability across all sectors.
It's not just that it, but also the world of remote work will not be changing after the pandemic. The companies will need to evaluate their security systems for weak points which were not addressed in the abrupt shift to remote working and then begin to think about an overall strategy for security on remotes in the future.
Important takeaway: If your business has experienced a sudden shift to remote workers You must pinpoint weak points that made your business vulnerable to threats.
- New challenges from Ransomware
Ransomware is among the most prevalent risks to any organization's information security. It is a threat that will only increase and develop into a major security trend through 2021. Ransomware attacks can cause havoc to organizations, causing financial losses and data theft due to the expense of recovering from the damage. In 2021, ransomware-related attacks cost more than normal data loss, which cost $4.44 million.
The sophistication of the techniques criminals employ is increasing as well. The focus is growing on extortion-based attacks, in which hackers take company's information and then secure it, so that they cannot access it. After that, cybercriminals threaten the business, promising to release private information until a ransom payment is made. The cost of this cyberattack is substantial due to the sensitive information in the process and the financial consequence that comes with paying for the ransom.
Although many IT departments and businesses depend upon Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) for connectivity to the corporate networks, VPNs are proving inadequate for the 2021s and even beyond. The most popular entry point of ransomware attacks is through phishing and businesses must recognize that attacks are increasing dramatically and take action accordingly. ZTNA, or Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) is emerging as a secure alternative to control the remote access to sensitive information and decreasing the chance of attacks. In 2023 60% of businesses will be able to phase out VPNs and switch to ZTNA.
Important takeaway: Switch to ZTNA to improve your remote access network and decrease the chance of being attacked.
- Increased Use of Multi-Factor Authentication
While passwords are still a common practice for best practices in cybersecurity however, more businesses will implement the multifactor authentication (MFA) as an additional security measure against security breaches and malicious attacks in 2021. MFA requires an application of at least two distinct factors to authorize users to access data that is secure and requiring users to make use of multiple devices to prove their identity. A good illustration of MFA working is using one-time passwords that is sent across two or more gadgets .
While using MFA is vital for secure communication, Microsoft recently urged users to switch away from phone-based MFA (when you receive the unique passcode transmitted to your phone by SMS text) because of the weak security that is present in the telephone networks of in the present. SMS-based messages aren't secured, so hackers can access the plain text codes. This is why companies must choose more secure methods for MFA to implement, including applications-based MFA such as Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator.
The most important thing to remember is that you should consider the possibility of implementing MFA within your company Be wary of the dangers associated with telephone-based MFA.
- Continued Rise of AI
Machine learning and AI are increasing in capabilities and sophistication as companies continue to improve these techniques in 2021 to make an element in their infrastructure for security. AI is being increasingly used to create automatic security solutions that take the place of human intervention, which allows to analyse massive amounts of risk information in a faster rate. This is beneficial for large corporations that handle large amounts of data, as well as smaller or mid-sized enterprises who have security teams that are lacking resources.
While AI offers a significant opportunity to enhance security for enterprises, the advancement and increasing usage of this technology can go in both directions. Criminal networks are making use of AI to make their attacks more efficient and are resorting to methods of data poisoning and model theft to accomplish this. That said, organizations would be remiss to bypass the opportunity AI presents--organizations who suffered a data breach but had AI technology fully deployed saved an average of $3.58 million in 2020.
The most important thing to remember is that if you haven't yet, you should implement AI-powered security systems into your company to speed up security measures and save millions of dollars in the case of a data breach.
- Increased Attacks on Cloud Services
Due to the rapid and widespread acceptance of remote work following COVID-19 the demand for cloud-based infrastructure and services was heightened. As we move into 2021 and beyond the trend will increase as more companies adopt cloud-hosted services.
Cloud-based services provide number of benefits, such as capacity, efficiency, and lower cost however, they're a major threat to attackers. Companies must examine the security issues that come with cloud services and assess the vulnerabilities within their existing infrastructure. For instance, insecure cloud settings were a major source of data breaches in the year 2020. They resulted in an average price that was $4.41 million. Furthermore, moving to the cloud raised costs of the incident by 267,469.
Important note: Prior to undertaking any work-load migration into the cloud be sure you're aware of security measures you need to put in place to prevent the risk of a data breach.
- Data Privacy as a Discipline
With the increasing number of prominent cyberattacks that expose thousands of personal identifiable data (PII) information, the concerns regarding data privacy security, management and privacy have risen. In 2021, privacy concerns will no longer be as a separate component of a security strategy and will be an independent program. The requirements for regulatory compliance continue to rise in recent years and are expected to continue increase until 2021. Companies will have to focus on their privacy initiatives as they move forward.
Data privacy is a factor in almost everything in an organisation starting with the creation and implementation of the corporate plan to remaining in sync with HR and security during the entire process. It is important to think about privacy officers for data, records deletion and retention, roles-based security controls for access, encrypted while in the transit phase and network segmentation to evaluate the best ways to enhance their data privacy the year 2021 as well as beyond.
Important takeaway: Data privacy is playing a bigger part for security in companies across all sectors and the need to identify the weak points within your business must be the top priority. www.webroot.com/safe
Cybersecurity Hygiene in 2021 and Beyond: Tips for Businesses
From what we've witnessed so far, a lot of the trends in cybersecurity that we've observed over the last few years have been amplified by COVID-19. Companies must take their cybersecurity risks seriously. Being proactive is one of the key steps businesses can take in 2021. Businesses that accept the reality that cybersecurity is no longer an option investment will be more successful in overcoming the security challenges they currently confront.
