Check Point Software Technologies, a global provider of cybersecurity solutions, has released its 2022 cybersecurity forecast, which outlines the major security challenges that businesses will face in the coming year.
As cybercriminals try to profit off the Covid-19 pandemic’s effects, they’ll develop new ways to attack using deep fakes, bitcoin, mobile wallets, and other methods.
The Global Cyber Security Forecast 2022 report’s highlights include the following:
- Fake news and deception operations are making a comeback: Misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic and vaccination information has circulated throughout 2021. Cyber criminals will continue to use fake news campaigns to carry out phishing attacks and scams in 2022.
- Supply chain cyber attacks will become more widespread, and governments will begin to implement rules to prevent these attacks and protect networks, as well as collaborate with the private sector and other countries to discover and target new threat groups around the world.
- Terrorist groups and political activists will be able to further their agendas and carry out more complex and extensive attacks as infrastructure and technology capabilities improve. Cyber attacks will increasingly be employed as proxies in proxy wars to undermine global industry.
- Data breaches are increasingly common and cost more money: Data breaches will become more common and cost firms and governments more money to recover. The US insurance firm paid hackers $ 40 million in ransom in May 2021. It was a new high, and attackers’ ransom demands are projected to rise in 2022.
- Attackers Are Getting More Into Cryptocurrency: When bitcoin and altcoins become pure software, the cybersecurity required to protect against hackers stealing and manipulating them will inevitably evolve.
- Cybercriminals will evolve and adapt their strategies to exploit the rising dependency on mobile devices as mobile wallets and mobile payment platforms become more widely used.
- Microservice vulnerabilities will be exploited by attackers: As cloud service providers (CSPs) adopt the microservices architecture, attackers exploit the weaknesses in it to mount large-scale attacks against CSPs.
- Penetration tools are becoming more sophisticated: in 2021, one out of every 61 enterprises will be hit by ransomware. Ransomware assaults will become more sophisticated in 2022, as threat actors continue to target corporations that can afford to pay the ransom. Penetration tools will be increasingly used by hackers to customize attacks in real time and to live and work within victim networks.
“By 2021, hackers modified their attack strategy to take advantage of vaccination mandates, elections, and the transition to hybrid work, focusing on disrupting supply chains and networks of businesses,” said Maya Horowitz, vice president of research at Check Point Software.
“To remain ahead of threats, businesses must be proactive and secure and monitor every element of their attack surface, or they risk becoming the next target of sophisticated targeted attacks.” – she concluded.