Critical infrastructures will continue to face significant cybersecurity challenges in 2022. Because the ongoing pandemic situation shows that cybercriminals are coldly exploiting the crisis to attack targets such as healthcare, energy and financial services.
What new skills will IT security leaders need in 2022, what new security features will emerge in the near future, and what can we expect in general for 2022 in terms of cyber security and technology? Fleming Shi, Chief Technology Officer at Barracuda Networks, comments. What can we expect for 2022 in terms of cybersecurity and technology?
Digital transformation for SMEs
COVID-19 will continue to accelerate digital transformation for small and medium-sized businesses in 2022. Security should not be an afterthought. It should be part of every digital transformation decision. The pandemic will continue to impact businesses and the way they use technology as much in 2022 as it did in 2021. In 2022, businesses will continue to need to respond quickly to dynamic local and global conditions. Agility and flexibility have never been more important than today to differentiate yourself from the competition. Businesses will use more technologies to meet all the challenges. From a technology standpoint, this means that more cloud solutions will be deployed and more small and medium-sized businesses will use SaaS solutions, which in turn increases their potential attack surface. Because ransomware attacks will remain the major challenge for organizations in 2022.
Cyber security now on government agendas
Fortunately, the national governments now have the issue on their agendas and are increasingly working together at national level. This will slow down the attackers' ability to collect ransoms, which in turn will affect the volume of attacks. However, I believe that we are still in the post-breach era at the moment. This means that the attackers are still ahead of their victims because they have stolen data or access data and will probably also use this "capital" in one way or another in a damaging way. Growing cooperation at the law enforcement and nation-state levels will make payments more difficult. When criminals launch a ransomware attack and are unable to collect the ransom, even if they are willing to pay or negotiate, they have reached a point where they have a significantly higher chance of being identified. This uncertainty can certainly reduce the likelihood of an attack. But only continued cooperation in a global alliance makes it possible to slow down payments to criminals.
Who will face the greatest security challenges?
Critical infrastructures - from energy and financial services to education and healthcare - will continue to face major security challenges in 2022 as cybercriminals continue to focus on these sensitive areas of high vulnerability. Since these types of attacks can immediately threaten people's lives, security will be an immense challenge.
What skills will IT security managers need in 2022?
Fleming Shi, chief technology officer at Barracuda Networks (Image: Barracuda).
IT security officers must learn to understand forensics and incident response. Regardless of whether it is a large or small company that works with a managed service provider - many IT security teams are still struggling with too many tools and can only interpret the signals with difficulty or not at all. With tools such as an Open XDR platform or a managed XDR solution, IT security managers can react more efficiently. Add to that the severe shortage of cybersecurity professionals, and deploying a managed SOC (Security Operations Center) with XDR capabilities could be the answer for small and medium-sized businesses. In the future, more security positions will be filled with people who tend to have an atypical background or who have other skills. Addressing security challenges requires new thinking in the face of ever-changing attacks. This is a good opportunity to gain different perspectives and in the field of cyber security or IT this will play an important role in how companies secure themselves.
What new security features will emerge in 2022+?
IT security will shift more towards software in the future. Security leaders will have a greater focus on development—that is, software development and the software supply chain, which includes open source and other third-party libraries. Throughout the software development cycle, these specialists add value by making cybersecurity happen at the developer level.
Another future position that will emerge in the next few years is that of security analyst. To effectively detect and respond to threats, organizations will need security analysts who understand the correlation of these various signals and how to respond to these threats.
Data protection requirements vs. security decisions
In 2022, privacy will dominate security as data can no longer be freely used without accountability. The topic of data protection guidelines is very closely linked to that of digital transformation. Organizations deploy many SaaS technologies, download apps and software, but they need to be aware of the privacy implications of all the technologies they use. In 2022, companies will base their decision on which products to use on whether data compliance is sufficient for their customers or not.
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Via Barracuda Networks Striving to make the world a safer place, Barracuda believes that every business should have access to cloud-enabled, enterprise-wide security solutions that are easy to purchase, implement and use. Barracuda protects email, networks, data and applications with innovative solutions that grow and adapt as the customer journey progresses. More than 150.000 companies worldwide trust Barracuda to help them focus on growing their business. For more information, visit www.barracuda.com.