5 daring cybersecurity predictions for 2024

It’s Christmas already? In lower than per week, 2023 shall be within the rear-view mirror. This implies it’s not too early to look forward at what 2024 might convey for cybersecurity.

All through its historical past, the cybersecurity business has consistently reacted to attacker pivots in addition to operational actuality shifts, and the brand new yr shall be no totally different. The cat-and-mouse sport between attackers and defenders is bound to accentuate and turn into extra complicated as newer applied sciences like AI and the cloud change the cybersecurity panorama.

Add different components, similar to extra aggressive authorities motion on cybersecurity dangers and the 2024 election, and the brand new yr is shaping up as significantly dynamic.

Listed here are 5 tendencies to anticipate within the coming yr.

1: The accelerating knowledge explosion will drive a safety technique rethink

The world has been speaking about exponential development in pc knowledge for years, however actuality remains to be managing to exceed the hype. One report predicts that the quantity of knowledge a typical group must safe will soar by 42% within the subsequent yr and improve by a staggering 7X within the subsequent 5 years.

I imagine there are two primary causes for this: the ever-increasing prevalence of data-generating digital units and surging adoption of AI programs that require enormous quantities of knowledge for his or her coaching and enchancment.

In at this time’s multifaceted know-how panorama, enterprises face a brand new problem. Information generated in software-as-a-service (SaaS) programs climbed 145% within the final yr, whereas cloud knowledge was up 73%. By comparability, on-premise knowledge facilities noticed a 20% rise. Oh — and don’t overlook somebody has to pay the cloud and SaaS payments, that are going up nearly as quick as the info is rising.

What this all means is that in 2024, organizations will face a stiffer problem in securing knowledge throughout a quickly increasing and altering floor space.

That shall be a serious cybersecurity focus for a lot of organizations subsequent yr. Extra will acknowledge that all the safety assemble has shifted: It’s now not about defending particular person castles however somewhat an interconnected caravan.

2: Attackers will broaden their assaults on virtualized infrastructure

As organizations develop extra refined in defending conventional targets similar to computer systems and cell units, some unhealthy actors have already pivoted to attempting to penetrate different infrastructure parts similar to SaaS and Linux functions, APIs and bare-metal hypervisors.

In a telling signal of the risk, VMWare warned earlier this yr that attackers exploited vulnerabilities in its ESXi hypervisor and parts to deploy ransomware. Different stories in the course of the yr additionally confirmed that ESXi-related ransomware breaches are increasing. 

Let’s not overlook: Attackers learn the information too. They’re largely a “follower” financial system that quickly pivots to identified successes. 

Lastly, most of these assaults current many attacker benefits round velocity and scale for his or her intrusions. The know-how cuts each methods.

These applied sciences signify greenfield alternatives for attackers, and I believe we’ll hear extra about these sorts of incidents in 2024.

3: Edge units will develop as a goal for “boutique” hacker teams

In September, U.S. and Japanese authorities businesses introduced that hackers linked to the Individuals’s Republic of China used stolen or weak administrative credentials to compromise Cisco routers with the set up of hard-to-detect backdoors for sustaining entry.

The disclosure exemplified an rising development we’ll see extra of within the new yr: Authorities intrusion teams viewing assaults on edge units as a strategy to differentiate themselves from garden-variety ransomware gangs.

As a result of these sorts of intrusions take appreciable technological prowess, are sometimes tough to detect and might do a substantial amount of harm, they’re nearly undoubtedly a significant separator throughout cyber threats.

Edge units nearly actually shall be a serious cybersecurity battlefront in 2024 and can present a possibility for hacker teams to indicate off their capabilities. There shall be teams that may pull this off (and can). To push this prediction all the best way to the sting (pun supposed), authorities packages might even “defend” this edge entry from different cybercrime teams and push them out to keep up their stealthy entry.

4: AI will dominate the cybersecurity dialog

In the event you assume you haven’t already heard lots about AI’s potential for cybersecurity, simply wait till 2024. AI shall be entrance and middle in a spread of cybersecurity discussions.

Each attackers and defenders will step up their use of AI. The unhealthy guys will use it extra to generate malware, automate assaults and strengthen the effectiveness of social engineering campaigns. The great guys will counter by incorporating machine studying (ML) algorithms, pure language processing (NLP) and different AI-based instruments into their cybersecurity methods.

In the meantime, the Brennan Heart for Justice calls 2024 the primary presidential election of the generative AI period. Candidates probably might want to tackle the “AI anxiousness” that many citizens really feel. And, concern is rampant that the know-how could possibly be used to unfold disinformation by means of deepfakes and AI-generated voices.

I imagine there may be nearly no situation the place AI-driven deepfakes received’t be a part of the pending U.S. Presidential election amongst others. 

We’ll additionally hear extra concerning the position AI can play in fixing the persistent cybersecurity expertise hole, with AI-powered programs taking on increasingly more of the routine operations in safety operations facilities. 

With regards to cybersecurity in 2024, AI shall be in every single place.

5: CISOs (and others) will really feel stress from current authorities actions

In late October, the Securities and Change Fee introduced expenses towards SolarWinds Company — which was focused by a Russian-backed hacking group in one of many worst cyber-espionage incidents in U.S. historical past in 2019 — and its chief info safety officer, Timothy G. Brown.

The criticism alleged that for greater than two years, SolarWinds and Brown defrauded traders by overstating SolarWinds’ cybersecurity practices and understating or failing to reveal identified dangers. 

The costs got here practically six months after a decide sentenced Joseph Sullivan, the previous CISO at Uber, to a few years of probation and ordered him to pay a $50,000 positive after a jury discovered him responsible of two felonies. Sullivan had been charged with masking up a ransomware assault whereas Uber was underneath investigation by the Federal Commerce Fee for earlier lapses in knowledge safety.

However many critics of the decision have questioned why Sullivan could possibly be held criminally answerable for negotiating a deal to repay the ransomware attackers to guard his firm’s repute.

On prime of all that, new SEC guidelines on cybersecurity and disclosure of breaches took impact Dec. 15. They require private and non-private corporations to adjust to quite a few incident reporting and governance disclosure necessities.

All of this can have CISOs wanting over their shoulder in 2024. As if defending their organizations from unhealthy actors wasn’t difficult sufficient, now they must pay extra consideration to documenting completely every part. The CISO position will tackle a heavier regulatory compliance taste.

The whole C-suite can even probably need to recalibrate their personal/public sector discussions in 2024. 

Together with the factors above and their ripple results into different peer positions, the geopolitical panorama is altering. The final three years have proven unparalleled interplay and advocacy for working throughout personal and public divides. These are due largely to goodwill created from the community-wide SolarWinds response efforts and near-universal help for Ukrainian cyber efforts. 

SolarWinds and the SEC will shift the previous level — and the Israel-Hamas battle is way extra divisive than the Russian invasion of Ukraine. All of this may increasingly result in a demonstrable shift in how senior leaders converse of, and with, governments.

As these 5 predictions present, 2024 must be an particularly attention-grabbing yr within the cybersecurity enviornment. The brand new yr is upon us, and I’m buckling up for the trip.

Steven Stone is head of Rubrik Zero Labs at zero belief knowledge safety firm Rubrik.