Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2022.  Read them in this 14th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

Election Concerns, IoT Security and Crypto's Role

Contributed by Rapid7 Executives

Enterprise organizations have endured numerous software security threats in 2021, all the while having to navigate the second year of an ongoing pandemic - that's no small feat. As we internalize lessons learned from the year behind us, we look forward to the year ahead and forecast how the cybersecurity industry may fare in 2022. How will the U.S. navigate the upcoming midterm political elections? Will ransomware concerns ramp up or dial down? Who will be a bigger target for attackers?

Here are some predictions from the Rapid7 team:

Bob Rudis, Chief Security Data Scientist:

"The 2022 U.S. election season will drive multiple (some impactful) cyberattacks on candidate/party technical and campaign logistics infrastructure and data from U.S.-based sources. In addition, I predict a major U.S. government agency will suffer an extended, crippling ransomware attack, which will be a catalyst for further policy and enforcement actions by the Biden administration."

Deral Heiland, IoT Research Lead:

"I expect consumer IoT security awareness to grow in 2022 with a more focused attention on privacy. This will be triggered by an increase of breaches associated with IoT products, which will make the national headlines. With this new awareness, consumers will start expecting improved product security and reduced data warehousing, and demand that their personal data and online behavior information no longer be harvested and resold."

Erick Galinkin, Principal Artificial Intelligence Researcher:

"Ransomware will continue to be a huge threat and will draw even more attention in 2022. While we should keep an eye out for potential attempts to disrupt a major US government agency, the revenue lost from ransomware will still be an order of magnitude less than business email compromise."

Harley Geiger, Senior Director of Public Policy:

"The threat of ransomware and breaches will not abate, leading to continued scrutiny from Congress and agencies on companies' cybersecurity practices. Regulators will explore how to exercise existing authority to strengthen cybersecurity requirements, especially for critical infrastructure and government contractors. This includes continued implementation of the Biden Administration's Executive Order, new rules flowing from the late-2021 passage of incident reporting legislation, new cybersecurity-focused export controls, and FTC's updates to GLBA."

Tod Beardsley, Director of Research:

"In 2022, managed service providers (MSPs) will continue to be in the hot seat as intermediary targets for ransomware gangs. The efficacy of hitting MSPs was proven out in 2021, and even small, regional MSPs will need to stay on their toes with patches and 2FA everywhere to avoid getting exploited and phished by attackers who are targeting their downstream customers."

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