One cybersecurity solutions provider predicts so, amid additional forecasts of greater cyber threats looming on the horizon.
If one cybersecurity firm’s predictions are right, global organizations will emerge more alert and prepared for cyber incidents in 2022—thanks to a comprehensive, proactive, cloud-first approach to mitigating cyber risk.
In H1 2021, having blocked 40.9bn email threats, malicious files and malicious URLs for customers—a 47% year-over-year increase—Trend Micro Incorporated predicts that threat actors in 2022 will focus ransomware attacks on cloud and data center workloads and exposed services to take advantage of the large number of employees continuing to work from home.
Vulnerabilities will be weaponized in record time and chained with privilege escalation bugs to drive successful campaigns, according to the firm’s researchers. IoT systems, global supply chains, cloud environments, and DevOps functions will be in the crosshairs. More sophisticated commodity malware strains will be aimed at small- and medium- sized enterprises (SMEs).
Said Vijendra Katiyar, the firm’s Country Manager, India & SAARC: “It’s been a tough couple of years for cybersecurity teams, disrupted by work-from-home mandates and challenged as corporate attack surfaces have exploded in size. However, as hybrid work emerges and more certainty returns, security leaders will be able to plot a robust strategy to plug gaps and make the bad guys work much harder.”
The firm’s researchers predict that many organizations will be ready for the challenge as they build out and implement a strategy to proactively mitigate emerging risks via:
- Stringent server hardening and application control policies to tackle ransomware
- Risk-based patching and a high-alert focus on spotting security gaps
- Enhanced baseline protection among cloud-centric SMEs
- Network monitoring for greater visibility into IoT environments
- Zero Trust principles to secure international supply chains
- Cloud security focused on DevOps risk and industry best practices
- Extended detection and response (XDR) to identify attacks across entire networks
Research, foresight, and automation are critical for organizations to manage risk and secure their workforce, the firm asserted.
