5 daring cybersecurity predictions for 2024

It’s Christmas already? In lower than per week, 2023 will probably 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 trade has continuously reacted to attacker pivots in addition to operational actuality shifts, and the brand new 12 months will probably be no totally different. The cat-and-mouse sport between attackers and defenders is bound to accentuate and grow to be extra advanced as newer applied sciences like AI and the cloud change the cybersecurity panorama.

Add different elements, reminiscent of extra aggressive authorities motion on cybersecurity dangers and the 2024 election, and the brand new 12 months is shaping up as significantly dynamic.

Listed below are 5 tendencies to anticipate within the coming 12 months.

1: The accelerating information explosion will power a safety technique rethink

The world has been speaking about exponential development in pc information for years, however actuality remains to be managing to exceed the hype. One report predicts that the amount of knowledge a typical group must safe will bounce by 42% within the subsequent 12 months and enhance by a staggering 7X within the subsequent 5 years.

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

In as we speak’s multifaceted expertise panorama, enterprises face a brand new problem. Information generated in software-as-a-service (SaaS) techniques climbed 145% within the final 12 months, whereas cloud information was up 73%. By comparability, on-premise information 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 information throughout a quickly increasing and altering floor space.

That will probably be a significant cybersecurity focus for a lot of organizations subsequent 12 months. Extra will acknowledge that your complete safety assemble has shifted: It’s now not about defending particular person castles however fairly an interconnected caravan.

2: Attackers will broaden their assaults on virtualized infrastructure

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

In a telling signal of the menace, VMWare warned earlier this 12 months that attackers exploited vulnerabilities in its ESXi hypervisor and parts to deploy ransomware. Different studies in the course of the 12 months 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 recognized successes. 

Lastly, a lot of these assaults current many attacker benefits round velocity and scale for his or her intrusions. The expertise cuts each methods.

These applied sciences symbolize 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 pattern we’ll see extra of within the new 12 months: 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 quite a lot of injury, they’re nearly undoubtedly a significant separator throughout cyber threats.

Edge units nearly actually will probably be a significant cybersecurity battlefront in 2024 and can present a possibility for hacker teams to indicate off their capabilities. There will probably be teams that may pull this off (and can). To push this prediction all the best way to the sting (pun meant), authorities applications might even “defend” this edge entry from different cybercrime teams and push them out to take care of their stealthy entry.

4: AI will dominate the cybersecurity dialog

If you happen to suppose you haven’t already heard quite a bit about AI’s potential for cybersecurity, simply wait till 2024. AI will probably be entrance and heart in a spread of cybersecurity discussions.

Each attackers and defenders will step up their use of AI. The dangerous guys will use it extra to generate malware, automate assaults and strengthen the effectiveness of social engineering campaigns. The nice 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 Middle for Justice calls 2024 the primary presidential election of the generative AI period. Candidates seemingly might want to deal with the “AI anxiousness” that many citizens really feel. And, concern is rampant that the expertise might be used to unfold disinformation by deepfakes and AI-generated voices.

I consider there may be nearly no situation the place AI-driven deepfakes gained’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 techniques taking on increasingly of the routine operations in safety operations facilities. 

On the subject of cybersecurity in 2024, AI will probably 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 prices 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 data 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 recognized dangers. 

The fees got here practically six months after a choose sentenced Joseph Sullivan, the previous CISO at Uber, to 3 years of probation and ordered him to pay a $50,000 superb after a jury discovered him responsible of two felonies. Sullivan had been charged with overlaying up a ransomware assault whereas Uber was beneath investigation by the Federal Commerce Fee for earlier lapses in information safety.

However many critics of the decision have questioned why Sullivan might be held criminally chargeable for negotiating a deal to repay the ransomware attackers to guard his firm’s status.

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

All of this may have CISOs trying over their shoulder in 2024. As if defending their organizations from dangerous actors wasn’t difficult sufficient, now they must pay extra consideration to documenting completely all the pieces. The CISO position will tackle a heavier regulatory compliance taste.

All the C-suite will even seemingly should 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 much 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 12 months within the cybersecurity area. The brand new 12 months is upon us, and I’m buckling up for the trip.

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