The Bottom Line: It does not come as a surprise that ransom-related attacks will intensify and reach unprecedented levels of sophistication in the next few years. Attackers will go after user accounts, and in particular privileged ones, to gain access and move laterally through the network searching for sensitive data and other high-value assets. In addition to that, the increasing convergence between IT and OT networks coupled with the deployment of 5G will open the door to novel threats aimed at disrupting infrastructure. CISOs, IT and Business leaders must seriously focus on strengthening defensive and resilience measures to avoid disastrous breaches.
Our latest Cybersecurity Pulse study shows that the majority of enterprises are most concerned about the following cyber threats:
- Ransom-related attacks remain the number one concern for most cybersecurity executives. Ninety-one percent (91%) of respondents are concerned about conventional ransomware attack (data encryption and exfiltration). The vast majority are actively strengthening preventive measures to better protect data backup (by implementing advanced protection measures to prevent ransomware attacks from invading backup data), contain the spread of attacks (by implementing controls to prevent lateral movement of threats within and across their IT and OT network) and respond to incidents in case of data breaches (by modernizing their incident response playbooks). Triple extortion ransomware, including data encryption, data exfiltration, and DDoS attacks, are becoming the new norm and Seventy-seven percent (77%) of respondents have raised concerns about the threat of ransom-related distributed denial of service (R-DDoS). Combined with conventional ransomware attacks, this threat can be catastrophic as attackers can threaten to disrupt business operations and at the same time disclosing data publicly, leaving enterprises with no or truly little negotiation power.
- Seventy-six percent (76%) of respondents are concerned about cloud jacking attacks, the process by which cloud computing is infiltrated by a third party. Privileged accounts are usually the primary targets of attackers, allowing them to gain elevated administrative access and gain unauthorized access to the network. The worrying news is that our latest study revealed that one of every two enterprise clients still relies on too many manual processes for managing privileged access, leading to a significant risk exposure. Securing privileged accounts used by human and non-human identities is without any doubt a challenging job, especially when we add the complexity of multi and hybrid cloud environments. Well-designed privileged access processes are unfortunately not enough to keep pace with the constant and soaring number of privileged accounts, and only high levels of automation can guarantee the completeness, accuracy, and timeliness of day-to-day operational activities.
- Seventy-three percent (73%) of respondents are concerned about Internet of Things (IoT) devices security threats and seventy-one percent (71%) are worried about 5G vulnerabilities that could be exploited by attackers. Novel threats associated with 5G deployment and the exponential rise of new IoT devices introduced into 5G networks will drastically increase the attack surface. It has become abundantly clear that cybercriminals will jump on the opportunity to leverage IoT and 5G to perpetrate large scale cyber attacks.
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