Top 10 Cybersecurity Trends in 2022

Top 10 Cybersecurity Trends in 2022

We’ve compiled a list of the top trends keeping security providers and innovators on their toes this year so far. The list is curated from different reliable sources, you can check them at the end of this blog.

The everlasting battle between protectors and attackers will never seize to exist. What results from such dynamic is either material and non-material losses or, in the better scenario, an innovation. Innovative solutions in the cybersecurity landscape happen almost by the hour. Here are 10 of the most trending cybersecurity topics, and a brief definition of what they are, and why the industry cares so much about them now.

Cybersecurity trends in 2022

1. Securing the remote workforce

With COVID-19 forcing the vast majority of businesses to adapt their operating models, new threats and vulnerabilities manifested themselves and faced no resistance in the process. Technology providers like SonicWall and Barracuda offer dedicated solutions to secure those who need to operate remotely wherever they are. The solutions cover a wide spectrum of needs from simple file sharing to remotely accessing the organization’s most valuable digital assets. Sonicwall and Barracuda offer dedicated solutions to secure those who need to operate remotely wherever they are. The solutions cover a wide spectrum of needs from simple file sharing to remotely accessing the organization’s most valuable digital assets.

The widest occurring prey-cases happen to professionals using the same mobile device for both their business and personal communication. This poses as a challenge for security teams, since the user is by far the weakest link between the security provider and exploiter. Securing a device from within the organization is doable to a far extent, but what could be done when the user decides to download a shady application or browse a non-secured webpage? Only highly focused and agile solutions like XDR with high reliance on machine learning and artificial intelligence are able to keep up with the unaware user. Which brings us to the second trend of 2022, security awareness.

2. Security awareness

As threats and criminals grow bigger and smarter, protection needs to start from a point much earlier than the organization’s devices and data security policies. A lot of global and multinational organizations have already integrated basic cybersecurity awareness sessions into their teams’ development plans. Simply, the liability of a team member falls too short from recovering an organization’s hard-earned data or make up for the losses caused by a disaster similar to a data leak or a breach into the repositories.

As a result, personnel teams are realizing that the higher the awareness towards attacks the more likely they are to avert disaster as an organization. Attacks that seem stupid on the outside are usually the easiest way to a datacenter’s heart. Professionals who have never been exposed to the means and methods of cybercriminals fail to realize how a simple click on an e-mail that looks okay could compromise the organization one way or another. Cybercriminals never have a one-way in strategy. They are usually ruthless and will try every tool at their disposal to reach their targets, even if the cost is another human’s integrity.

Socially-engineered attacks have also become much smarter recently. Some of our readers are well-aware of Uber’s recent breach that compromised Uber’s internal applications, AWS and G Suite accounts. It has later been announced that an 18-year-old attacker managed to gain access into Uber’s network by convincing an employee to hand-over their VPN credentials because it was needed by the Information Technology team.

3. AI-driven cybersecurity

As mentioned in point #1, we can see the dependence on AI and ML growing exponentially in 2022. Part of the reason behind this is the growth-trend in cyberattacks both quantitively and qualitatively. Yet, most of the threats can be detected early on with thorough behavioral analysis. Such analysis mandates the processing of millions of datapoints simultaneously to be able to detect the familiar pattern(s) cybercriminals often resort to during their sneak. Password breaches through brute-force attacks can be detected, by a bot. A cross-site scripting attempt could also be detected by a bot as it happens, and same goes for an un-authorized redirect from one of the organizations’ domains. All these attempts have one thing in common, if an eye is kept on that datapoint to monitor each and every data transaction, the criminal would probably be caught red-handed every time.

The other reason comes as a collateral result to the cloud-migrations that most organizations are bound to adopt at some point. While this is in no way a statement that cloud will replace on-prem. But what it very obvious now is that hybrid architecture is here to stay. Data routes are also becoming more and more intertwined. But the beautiful thing about it is that almost every bit is indexable and searchable one way or another. While man was finding a rhythm with machine, AI-driven cybersecurity took the proactive tools to completely new heights. Heights that can span between your premises, the cloud, and everything in between.

4. Cloud security

The shared responsibility model is still a bit challenging for a lot of professionals to get straight. Shortly put, cloud services providers like Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS ensure the security of their clouds’ perimeter. Yet, a tenant-app’s user who gets escorted to the app’s storage on the cloud, cannot -in most cases- be the liability of the cloud-host, unless one of their cloud app security offerings are utilized. Be it a Web Application Firewall or a similar solution. Web Application Firewalls have been seeing a rise in demand recently, especially since most offered WAF solutions help significantly with compliance and security patching, offloading the organizations’ soc, noc and compliance teams. While cloud has posed some of the most sensitive security vulnerabilities, that challenges that come with it are not only limited to data security, but some of the challenges also include:

a. Compliance across geographies

b. Cloud migration

c. Increased number of entry-points for attackers

5. Security on the code-level

More and more organizations are falling victims to their security illiteracy. The false notion that most developers believe in is that “who cares that much about our data?” let alone digging into the code to find an entry-point. While such honest developers are priceless to have on your team, their negligence towards the hunger and the persistence of cybercriminal could only be sympathized with. Your data is worth something to someone. We do not see it because most, if not all the unlawful transactions of data happen in “the dark web” using cryptocurrencies, leaving minimal digital traces and making it way hard for peacekeepers to enact remediation with the human behind it.

Security on the coding level is becoming trendier and more needed than ever, thanks to digital transformation and the mobile-first movement that is sending a torrent of data and applications into the cloud. Smarter security solutions go to great lengths and depths to ensure the protection of individuals and their data, imagine if the security vulnerabilities within the code travelling between the nodes is in itself unbreachable (impossible, but hopefolly, someday). This can relief a lot of strain posed on cybersecurity technology providers and innovators.

The shape of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) is changing and the duration to go to market is becoming shorter and shorter. As a result, security is usually overlooked, or tested rapidly right before release and many security vulnerabilities later present themselves as “could’ve been safer, had we started way earler” … This is why the term “developer-first security” has been used liberally recently and will probably stay with us for a while.

6. Internet of vectored Things

Exciting as they are, IoT devices are mainly a security concern because of how it granulates the entry points multiple folds on a much wider surface area. This besides the complexity of their security and management, leads to firewalls either overlooking them or significantly impacting their performance.

Cyberattacks have followed users everywhere. From email to text messaging to social media, and now it is IoT. We are not saying your smart lights are monitoring your every move but be attentive to where your data is. What is stored where, and what has permission to share which. Cybercriminals don’t collect all the information from a single point, but a single point could potentially be an entry to multiple other sensitive ones.

7. Ransomware, still, and more than ever

In Q1 2021, more ransomware attacks have been made than in all four quarters of 2019 combined! Ransomware is a kind of malware attack that is usually initiated with a phishing download link or an infected USB device, guarding all the machine’s data behind a crypted wall, and is usually released to the victim when a ransom is paid in an untraceable currency like cryptocurrency.

Ransomware criminals have had demands beyond reason before, some of which were life-threatening. Awareness and education are tools and key in the fight against ransomware. Most cybersecurity vendors offer ransomware protection through both centralized and end-point solutions.

8. Mobile first, front, and center

In 2019, RSA’s Current State of Cybercrime reported that 70% of fraudulent transactions originated from a mobile platform. This handheld contains both personal and business information that is worth a lot to you. It only makes sense for cybercriminals to vector them with endless types of attacks the results of which could be account takeover, data tampering and data loss.

9. Multifactor Authentication is still king

Annoying as it is for the user, MFA is still the most effective security method for password protection. However, some MFA methods, particularly the phone and SMS based ones have proven vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks due to the lack of encryption.

More security-aware organizations advise their team members to use app-based password authenticators and stay away from phone and SMS, to ensure a more secure end-to-end encryption of the shared key.

10. Governance, regulation and compliance

More apps, more data, more transactions, even more sensitive data … Who’s entitled to that data? Who has the right to use it, monetize it, or share it? Who’s responsible for safeguarding it? What if google is reckless with my data, what are the consequences and what legal framework protects me ultimately? All of these legitimate questions have been arising in the past decade. It’s only recently that we’ve started seeing serious legislation set in motion with the GDPR act. We’ve seen companies like Apple and Facebook arguing over the iPhone users simply because Apple denied Facebook the keyhole to its users’ advertising IDs.

However, it goes way deeper than your advertising ID. What about your banking information? If someone gains access to your account through the bank’s mobile application, it is a bad situation for both you and the bank, hence, financial compliance is the set of rules that are required to reach the minimum global security standard in protection of data that concerns the client, stakeholder, employee or shareholder. Two of the more prominent rules, adapted for today’s liberal use of contactless payments and financial cards, require a financial institution to deploy both a datacenter and a web-application firewall, and with the line between fintech institutes and banking institutes getting blurred by the hour, fintech companies are carrying the same burden of compliance.

Top 10 Cybersecurity Trends in 2022