In this post, SANS Certified Instructor and founder of River Security Chris Dale shares predictions for the cybersecurity industry in 2024.
Scams on the rise!
Funding is still being allocated evenly to combat traditional crime, while not necessarily being distributed evenly to cyber. Cybercrime is on the rise, and unfortunately, I believe we are going to see many more scams happen in 2024, especially those targeting friends, family, our parents, and children. More and more government entities are reporting that the cybercrime industry is on an extreme incline, and unfortunately, budgets and attention is not there to fight the trends yet.
Data, the new currency of 2024.
We are going to see data ransom impact organizations to a much greater degree than previously. Companies are data hoarders; they refuse to delete or encrypt (and secure the key) data which is not used for day-to-day operations. We are going to see data leaks, ransom, and companies losing value due to the theft of data. "Why did we lose market share in 2024?" and "How come Acme Company all of a sudden managed to produce and deliver the same value as us?" are some of the statements we will see board members and companies ask themselves in the future, while the reason for such things perhaps originated years before, due to data theft.
Hacking is easy, and more and more threat actors will understand this.
Terrorist groups, hacking for hire, ideology funded threat actors will be leveraged by dubious entities. Everyone is and will be demonstrated to be a target in 2024. It doesn't matter if you are big or small, threat actors are getting in and finding out a way to monetize you now or later. Whether it is access brokers selling entry points to your organization, your data being stolen, or traditional ransomware, if organizations have not yet done the best practices required in 2024, they will get owned. Get MFA, network segmentation, immutable backups, patch management on external attack surface, the principle of least privileges done NOW, or suffer the consequences.
