Cybersecurity – What to Expect in 2021?

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the world found its refuge on the internet. Thanks to the world wide web, shops, schools, and businesses continued unscathed by the global pandemic. But is the internet really so safe? Is our place of refuge indeed a protected space? Reports from the past years suggest that it is not so.

As the world moves online, cybercriminals creep into our homes and our phones. While we stayed safe inside our homes, cyber crimes followed us there. It looks like the world may not have been so unscathed after all! If you’re wondering what we can expect with cybersecurity in 2021, read on to find out!

Key Cybersecurity Predictions for 2021

Cybersecurity is the protection of internet-connected systems, including hardware, software, and data, from digital threats. Individuals and businesses use the practice to defend themselves against unauthorized access to data centers and computerized systems. (Clark, Gillis, Shea, 2021)

From the most prominent organizations to individual users scrolling through social media, everyone’s at risk. Governments, military, corporations, and financial organizations are infamous for storing, sharing, and consuming user data. In this article, we’ll be looking at what the cyber world holds for us in 2021. But first, let’s delve a little deeper into the elements of cybersecurity!

Components of Cyber Security

Cybersecurity is a combination of various tools, approaches, technologies, and training designed to protect and keep away attacks or unauthorized access. Thus, the term “cybersecurity” applies in various contexts and can be divided into a few common categories:

Application security – Application security is about measures or counter-measures taken during the life-cycle to protect applications from threats emerging due to flaws in the design. Apps need continuous updates and testing to safeguard them from attacks.
Endpoint security – Businesses need remote access, but it can also be a point of risk. Endpoint security is the method of guarding remote access to an organization’s network.
Data security – All our networks, systems, and applications use data. Protecting sensitive company and customer information is a separate and vital layer of protection.
Infrastructural security – Hardware and software are the heart and soul of every network. Protecting these devices is a crucial step in securing safe internet usage.
Business continuity planning – In the event of an infringement or a natural disaster, users should be sure that their data remains safe. For this, organizations will need a secure back-up plan.
Cloud security – Many records are in digital environments or “the cloud”. Protecting salient user data in this online environment posits a large number of challenges. (Groot, 2020)

New Year, New Concerns

The most critical challenge in cybersecurity is the ever-evolving nature of security risks. Traditionally, organizations and governments have focused most of their cybersecurity resources on perimeter security. That is, to protect only their most vital systems and defend against commonly known threats. But the post-pandemic world has left us unprepared and exposed. Traditional safety tactics are no longer appropriate or efficient. As a result, industry experts encourage more proactive and adaptive strategies for cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity budgets, once curtailed, are set to jump to leaps in this post-pandemic world. PwC found that most officials are planning to boost their cybersecurity spending in 2021 despite the majority of them expecting a decline in business earnings. (Columbus, 2020) Authentication, cloud data protection, and application monitoring will top the list of cybersecurity priorities. PwC found that cybersecurity is more business-critical now than ever before.

Work From Home, a Normalcy

There is no doubt that working from home will remain a significant trend in 2021. This worldwide shift to remote working has brought up various questions about safety and security of the systems we use. With many popular platforms changing their 20+ pages of privacy policies, people continue to grow apprehensive.

Researchers from Bitdefender say that it will be imperative to secure remote workers because they will continue to present a novel set of opportunities for the “bad guys”. The continued dependence on digital collaborative tools will create a vulnerable area for cybercrimes in 2021.

Trust No One

IT used to rely on virtual private networks (VPNs) to facilitate access to the corporate infrastructures. As COVID-19 drove employees to remote working, VPNs proved largely incompetent. Zero-trust network access (ZTNA) has risen as a more reliable alternative for businesses to regulate remote access to specific applications.

Some Threats Are on the Inside

Remote work has left organizations worldwide unprepared and unarmed to control or identify insider threats from unauthorized remote access, weak passwords, poorly protected networks, and the misuse of personal devices. These patterns are expected to continue and spike in 2021 and beyond.

Forecasts Say It’s Cloudy

According to the 2020 Cloud Security Report, the biggest threat was misconfiguration, with 68% of firms citing it as their most prominent concern. Unauthorized access was second on the list, followed by insecure interfaces and account hijacking.

As strong and contemporary as the cloud is, it’s also complicated and continuously evolving. From a security standpoint, this creates lots of challenges and opportunities for exploitation. The tricky thing about the cloud is that there are so many separate possible points of attack.

Check Your Inbox Carefully

Due to increased automation, experts warn enterprises to expect a steep rise in spear-phishing attacks in 2021. WatchGuard researchers say that cybercriminals have already begun creating automation tools to replace the manual aspects of spear phishing.

This will dramatically increase the amount of spear-phishing emails attackers can send at once, improving their success rate. On the bright side, these spear-phishing operations are likely to be easier to catch than the traditional, manually generated type. (Threatpost, 2021)

Smart Phones, Unsafe Phones?

Mobile threats have increased ever since the pandemic started. They vary from specialized spyware for snooping on encrypted messaging applications to criminals abusing Android critical security vulnerabilities. As phones make a vital part of our everyday lives, mobile threats will remain on the rise in 2021.

AI Meets Cybersecurity

AI technology, in combination with machine-learning, has brought tremendous changes in cybersecurity. AI has been predominant in building automated security systems, natural language processing, face detection, and automatic threat detection. AI-enabled threat detection systems can predict new attacks and hint at admins of any data breach instantly.

The CSOs Have Risen

Cybersecurity incidents and threats have shot up recently, forcing organizations to revise their security stance across cyber and physical environments. Incidents such as siegeware attacks (a combination of ransomware with BAS vulnerabilities) and GPS spoofing challenge the cyber-physical world.

Therefore, organizations that implement cyber-physical systems will use enterprise-level chief security officers (CSOs) to collaborate with many security-oriented silos. The CSO will bring physical and IT security, product management, and supply chain security into a centralized governance model. (Admin, 2020)

Final Thoughts

Cybersecurity has evolved dramatically over the years, but the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic were paramount. The rush to get everything online has definitely brought up various vulnerable points that opportunist cybercriminals are making use of.
While we may be past the damages of 2020, its adverse effects seem to spill over into 2021. Ultimately, the world should expect the worst while hoping for the best when it comes to cybersecurity in 2021.

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