2021 has been a roller coaster of a ride for many – specially for those involved in cybersecurity. From the high increase in ransomware across the board (41 billion threats blocked in the first six months of the year as per a report by Trend Micro) to the total number of data breaches in 2021 exceeding those in 2020 (As per a report by Forbes), it’s only wise to keep an eye on the coming year which will definitely have its own set of cybersecurity challenges and trends. Let’s explore a few in this blog post:

Mobile Banking Malware

It has been noted that there has been a significant increase in mobile banking malware/attacks over the past couple of years. These have led to financial data being compromised in various forms, such as transactions, bank details or security passwords. With the continued popularity of using mobile phones and them being subject to cyberattacks, it’s imperative that we are all aware of how unsafe our data is on these devices. In the first two quarters of 2021, the number of detected malicious installation packages on mobile devices globally stood around 2.3 million as per statista. Yes, that huge.

Cryptocurrency Attacks

The crypto market has seen significant growth over the last year. But on the other hand, there have also been a number of high profile thefts, which are worth noting. In a report published by Google “86% of the compromised Google Cloud instances were used to perform cryptocurrency mining, a cloud resource-intensive for-profit activity”. Cyber security in the area of cryptocurrencies is about to get a lot more important. As cyberattacks increase, so will the importance of well-structured approaches to prevent them.

Social Engineering Attacks

One term that has been circulated around for some time is that of a “social engineering threat”. This is where the hackers gain access to systems by manipulating the trust of users. As per a report by Verizon, 85% of the breaches in this year involved a human element and almost 36% of the breaches involved phishing (which is 11% higher than last year). In June of 2021, even LinkedIn fell prey to this malicious attack as well where data of 12.9 million people in IT, 6.7 million in the domain of HR and 4.8 million in finance was compromised. So if a giant like LinkedIn was able to become a victim of this, you should probably start thinking about how to keep your company’s data safe as well in the coming year.

Cloud Security

Cloud has been on the rise since quite some time now, however as the popularity of cloud increases, so does the cybersecurity risks associated with it. As per a report by cybertalk.org, almost 3.5% of an organization’s revenue in a 12 month span is hedged due to cloud account compromises, making it a key threat and action point for the coming year. Verizon, in its 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) showcased that almost 90% of data breaches tend to target external cloud assets.

So there you have it, the four key cybersecurity challenges to look out for in 2022. If you need help in ensuring that you remain safe against all these, then let’s set up a meeting? Click here to set up a time with our team of security professionals at JBS.