New challenges ascended in 2020 as a result of increased numbers of remote workers using new and experimental methods to access confidential information and major increase in e-commerce usage. The new access procedures and increases in traffic entice new attack vectors and is absolutely necessary for new strategies to mitigate them.
For 2021, below are the points in Cyber Security Sphere that I expect to be of critical importance.
- Rise of Virtual Security Team Concept
Most SMB organizations, it’s simply not feasible to employ a CISO and a team of security specialists when the total workforce is minimal. Here comes the vCISO, or virtual Chief Information Security Officer, and their virtual minions of security experts.
By bringing in such a consultant, an organization can reap the benefits of having an expert on hand to review continuity plans, analyze data related to a potential breach, establish your security perimeter at the data level, and more. A part-time security consultant gives you the benefits of years of collective experience going to work solving your security needs without spending on full-time salaries.
- The attacks on SOCs and remote workers will not stop
When employees forced to comply with work from home strategy, they are more vulnerable to cyber-attacks as they are struggling to adapt to new technologies and devices.
Cybercriminals took advantage of the widespread disruption with a barrage of cyberattacks targeting existing vulnerabilities and expanded threat surfaces in companies that weren’t prepared to support a remote workforce securely.
More than 80% of organizations already implemented BYOD for employees, however majority of them are still lacking in providing the appropriate malware protection. Companies with more IoT devices deployed as a part of Industrial evolution, security is a grave situation in such times and become more vulnerable from the security standpoint.
- Most Targeted Industries will be Finance, Health, and Education
Ransomware still holds the highest stand when it comes to the cyber threat posing on financial institutions. Various reports recognized that now the healthcare institutions can be the primary target of cyber criminals in 2021 for hacking patient’s sensitive data and sell in the Dark Web Market. The healthcare institutions needs to be utmost vigilant in actively monitoring, managing and deploying mechanisms to protect patient’s sensitive data. Post Covid-19 pandemic, all the educational institutions promoting online classes as there are no other means to provide education to students. If these institutions do not scale up their security, hackers might break in and cause huge financial and reputational losses.
- The wide use of AI and ML in Security
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are now widely used in threat intelligence and security automation, detection, and response tools and helped quite a bit on reducing the workload on the SOCs. AI-ML is already assisting to predict different threat levels, creating support tickets and giving alerts when something unprecedented tries to infiltrate and requires human intervention.
