From cautionary tales from Twitter to readying for cyber-warfare, 2022 has been an action-packed year in the digital world. The past year has seen cybersecurity’s meteoric rise to relevance, profit, and danger—and as we move into 2023, now is the time to look back for a glimpse forward.
The top five trends of the past year could help predict what lies ahead and how we can best prepare for a secure 2023.
Rally for Ransomware
2022’s biggest headline isn’t going away anytime soon. Ransomware is making itself a problem for every major industry, with attacks expected to crest into 2023.
One target your lists may have overlooked? Third-party cloud providers. The cloud is an increasingly popular destination for entities handling high volumes of client data. Ransomware attackers can use a cloud provider as one massive endpoint to attack the multiple servers that make up their clients.
CISOs warn about an evolution in ransomware attacks: a shift to data corruption over encryption. It’s quicker, easier, and more destructive for organizations who don’t want to pay their attackers. It’s up to you to make sure hackers don’t have a chip to bargain with—back up your data, invest in antivirus and malware detection, and make a list of your greatest vulnerabilities and assets to prioritize. Knowing your weak points may become your greatest strength.
Delineate Attack Horizons
With the Internet of Things (IoT) branching to new technologies in the home and the office, threat landscapes are becoming more connected and therefore treacherous by the day.
Remote work is part of our new reality, which means employee-owned personal devices are increasingly vulnerable to attacks on workplace servers and vice versa. Make sure you’re not just reviewing your endpoints, but also building remote resilience among your hybrid workforce and formulating policies and response strategies for compromised devices.
Operational Technology (OT) is another major concern for industrial entities who have an IoT linked to their machinery. Experts recommend organizations with OT assets differentiate their IT and OT security strategies, keeping separate teams with cohesive policies and open lines of communication.
Get serious about cyber defense.
Prepare For Washington’s Impact
A major deadline approaches with the advent of 2023. Following President Biden’s Cybersecurity Executive Order, the M-22-18 memo from the Office of Management and Budget directs all software producers to have a Software Bill of Materials and concrete security practices. These orders will supply clients with more information about how their service providers protect their user bases, as well as normalize more open security practices.
CISOs anticipate the SEC, FTC, FDIC, and CISA will be cracking down to require additional transparency, increased reporting, and a higher volume of supply chain security. The latter will be important for supply chain providers and clients alike. After catastrophic supply chain breaches in recent years, security in every step of the process has become more essential than ever.
Cull Crypto With Caution
Cryptocurrency was a major flash in the pan in 2022, but now experts fear the house could burn. MIT Technology Review reports over 100 major victims of crypto-based scams in 2022. The notable collapse of crypto exchange firm FTX was the latest tremor in crypto’s unwieldy world, and now, experts anticipate cybercriminals are homing in on other decentralized finance (“DeFi”) platforms.
The FBI has put out a warning notifying investors that hackers are taking an increased interest in DeFi’s open-source natures and multi-pronged functionality. Numerous vulnerabilities and exploits enabled cybercriminals to steal over $1.3 billion in the first three months of 2022, according to the 2022 Crypto Crime Report.
Now, after a successful test run, fears of crypto attacks in 2023 have only intensified, and DeFi security is struggling to keep up. So engage with caution!
Set Trust To Zero
A heavily trafficked employee user base means a high volume of different permissions and tiers of access. Thus, you’ll want to consider zero trust.
Gartner touts Zero-Trust Architecture (ZTA) as one of the strongest lines of defense in your risk management strategy for 2023. VP Thomas Lintemuth explains how ZTA assesses “device location, believability of user assertion, device hygiene, threat intelligence, time of day, day of week, and the data sensitivity of the application being requested […] Access is granted only when the calculated risk is less than the value of extending the access.”
In other words, the architecture “replaces implicit trust with continuously assessed risk and trust levels based on identity and context,” making your security posture adaptable and better at detecting malicious invaders.
Dive Deeply Or Don’t Bother
With so many threats intensifying, the last place you want to skim the surface is with your security assessments. Exposing your vulnerabilities requires deep audit expertise, best-in-breed-tools (sorry, open source ain’t gonna cut it), and knowledge of your specific high-risk industry.
As you budget for the year ahead, look beyond the bare minimum – where cybercriminals do their dirtiest work. Pull together a fully custom assessment package from among these à la carte options:
- IT Security Assessment with 11 Security Best Practice Evaluations to choose from
- IT Risk Assessment
- Network Vulnerability Assessment & Management
- IT General Controls Audit
- HIPAA Security & HIPAA Privacy Risk Assessments
- Ransomware & Endpoint Compromise Simulation
- Red Team Assessment or ongoing Residency
- Social Engineering Evaluation
- FedLine Security & Controls Procedures Audit
- Vendor Management Risk Assessment
Contact our team today for a proposal and 2023 discounts!
