Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2022. Read them in this 14th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Cyber Criminals Get Bold
By Mike Spanbauer, Senior Director and Technology
Evangelist, Juniper Networks
2021 certainly saw a rise in
pandemic-related cyberattacks, but in 2022, enterprises should anticipate that
these will go a step further. Cyber criminals are getting smarter, faster and
bolder with their attacks and will continue to take advantage of weaknesses
brought on by the pandemic, including leaner monitoring teams and gaps in
security. Additionally, threat actors will turn to targeted ransomware and
payment extraction to inflict the most damage possible. Here are my predictions
for how cyber criminals will shift their attack strategies in 2022 and how
enterprises can fight back.
Cyber criminals will continue to take advantage of
weaknesses brought forth by the pandemic: Throughout the pandemic,
organizations around the world have developed an even greater degree of
dependence on increasingly capable technology approaches to business
resilience. However, despite these efforts, threat actors have been able to
exploit both human and technical weaknesses in more complex and dispersed
networks resulting in considerable economic and productivity damages. Looking
ahead at 2022, threat actors will continue to exploit weaknesses such as missing
security patches that organizations struggle to correct due to ever-increasing
complexity and thus continue to further their own ends. In other words, expect
2022 to look at lot like 2021 in terms of notable and sensational exploits.
Bad actors will expect victims of cybercrime to pay up
and pay up fast: Over the last 18 months threat actors have grown
increasingly savvy in their approaches to ransomware and payment extraction.
Because full exfiltration of data is completed prior to the "lock" and before
victims can encrypt data, organizations quickly realize that the risk is so
great they must immediately acquiesce to ransom demands. Despite aggressive
investigations by authorities around the world and even some high-profile
arrests, this trend will continue to increase in 2022 as it remains the fastest
method of monetization of an attack. Even when ransomware gangs are shut down,
they will quickly reform, often with new branding,as the techniques used are
well known and there is so much money to be had.
To make matters much worse, threat actor objective execution
time will also continue to shrink from around 30 minutes to 60 minutes, to even
less. This means that organizations must invest in prevention technologies and
early detection efforts or expect to pay dearly in remediation and analysis.
There is literally no time to lose.
HTTP2.0 and TLS 1.3 will see increased adoption by threat actors
as an evasion mechanism to avoid recon, C2, and exfiltration: The rule
of thumb is that you have to "see the traffic to protect," and this is
generally true. Without the ability to thoroughly inspect encrypted traffic in
an organization, newer theoretically more secure internet standards including
HTTP/2 and TLS 1.3. will provide an additional avenue for both adopting
organizations to secure and ensure privacy of data, but this mechanism also
serves threat actors in the same way. This further complicates the inspection
demands most NGFW or clear text security detection methods employ today. Thus,
security measures may ultimately fall short as exploits can easily be hidden
even within encrypted traffic that many organizations may opt out of
decrypting. This in turn will lead to greater interest in tools that allow for
malicious activity to often be identified without needing to break the
encryption.
Remember, hackers and other bad actors are constantly evolving and
updating their nefarious tools and tactics, but enterprises are generally well
equipped to fight back if the proper policies and procedures are in place. 2022
very well may be the year that cybercriminals get bolder, but who says the IT
"good guys" can't beat them to it?
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mike Spanbauer is a Senior Director and Technology
Evangelist for Juniper Networks. Mike's work and expertise in network and
security advisory, consulting, and product strategy over the last 25 years
provides a breadth of perspective across network and security execution, as
well as approaches to solve for operational and governance needs that
organizations face. He most recently served as Vice President of Research
Strategy for NSS Labs, driving the enterprise research and consulting practice
for NSS' global clients. Prior to that, Mike held leadership roles at Current
Analysis and HP in research, strategy, and competitive intelligence.