The landscape for cybersecurity has changed a lot in 2021 as millions of workers went from an office to a home office environment. And with this massive shift to remote work, cybersecurity threats have grown exponentially.
Cybersecurity Trends For 2021 And Beyond.
Remote Workers: It’s no surprise that COVID-19 and the shift to remote work had significant cybersecurity implications. Many companies side-stepped cyber-attack prevention entirely to keep their business running, a decision that opened up a new level of risk.
The Ransomware Challenge: While many IT departments and companies rely on Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to prevent ransomware attacks, VPNs are proving insufficient. By 2023, 60% of businesses will phase out of VPNs and transition to Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA).
Increased Use Of Multi-Factor Authentication: While passwords remain the standard for cybersecurity, companies now adopt multi-factor authentication (MFA) to defend against data breaches. While MFA is critical to security, Microsoft advised users to move away from phone-based MFA due to the weak security among telephone networks.
Increased Attacks On Cloud Services: With the rapid adoption of remote work, cloud-based services have increased drastically. Going into 2022 and beyond, this trend will only continue to grow as more businesses adopt cloud-hosted processes. By the way, misconfigured cloud settings were the #1 leading cause of data breaches in 2020.
COVID-19 Phishing Schemes: The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about a significant level of phishing attacks. To combat this, organizations should consider their identity management to ensure the right people have an appropriate level of access.
Insider Threats On The Rise: Insider threats are becoming a reality for many businesses. Because of this, a company should not ignore the danger from its employees, partners, or subcontractors. While many executives find it a challenge to think anyone would do such a thing, here’s a fact you cannot ignore: 15% to 25% of all security breaches are triggered by a trusted business partner.
Hire A Chief Security Officer: More and more businesses realize the importance of cybersecurity and the importance of a Chief Security Officer. And you should too.
Be Proactive: Being proactive is the most critical step your business can take, as cybersecurity is no longer an optional investment.
Executive Summary:
Every company needs to train its staff on how to prevent cybersecurity attacks.
Unfortunately, only 11% of companies report a high degree of confidence in managing or responding to a cyber-attack.
Cybersecurity prevention is still maturing as a discipline; therefore, it should be an area of importance for your business and its strategy.
Chief Security Officers need to become more vigilant in identifying risks and articulating how they could trigger a cyber-attack (an attack that could cost millions of dollars).
