One of the main cyber-risks is to think they don’t exist. Every year, people and organizations all over the world put their faith in the computer security software industry to protect them from the rising menace of cybercrime. Global spending on security software reached $40.8 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach $458.9 billion in 2025, according to a survey. While current technology has shown to be useful in the past, its efficiency is eroding as cybercrime gets more complex every day.
Users, as well as network providers, may play a critical role in ensuring security against emerging cyber security risks. Because of their superior network location, ISPs may have a significantly larger influence on overall cyber security. Internet connections, like Spectrum Internet, offer a secure connection to safeguard consumers from cyber threats such as DDoS assaults, which may be delivered without a secure internet connection.
Cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated as technology advances. Continue reading this article to discover the emerging cyber security threats to be aware of in 2022 and beyond.
1. Ransomware
Ransomware is a sort of virus that has recently emerged as a cyber security threat. It normally encrypts access to your device and keeps it that way until demands (Ransome) are satisfied. The objective is frequently monetary, and payment is usually sought online, such as through bitcoin, in order to preserve the cyber criminal’s identity. Ransomware can be distributed by everyday user activity such as clicking on malicious links by accident, corrupted external devices, or hacked websites. However, this may also happen without the involvement of a user, thanks to professional cybercriminals’ remote desktops.
Anti-malware tools may occasionally be used to eradicate ransomware after a reboot, or users can restore their complete system using a different drive or the cloud.
2. Cloud Threats
The flow of high volume of confidential data between companies and Cloud service providers can provide sites for malicious leaks of sensitive data to untrusted parties. While cloud services are being widely used for data backups, disaster recovery, and ease of business, there are several major emerging cyber security threats to the cloud including the following:
Data Loss
While the cloud service providers boast about the sharability of their service, they also open doors for major security concerns. In fact, according to a report, about 70% of organizations consider data loss as the major cyber-security concern of their businesses.
API Vulnerabilities
Application Programming Interfaces provide the platform that allows the developer to create a bridge between the cloud computing services. Using these APIs, one computer system can make its functionalities open for the other shared devices. While this might be tempting to use, it poses many serious threats leading to a major loss.
The situation of Nissan is an example of API vulnerability as an emerging cyber security issue. The Nissan LEAF is one of the best-selling electric vehicles in the world. The firm has created Android and iOS apps that allow customers to remotely monitor their automobiles and control frequently used functions using their smartphones.
While delivering a workshop in Norway, Australian security expert Troy Hunt was alerted that the app for iOS only utilized the vehicle’s VIN for identification. Further investigation found that the API utilized by the mobile applications could be accessed without the usage of any form of authentication token.
Experts revealed that having the VIN of a Nissan LEAF allowed them to send requests to enable and disable climate control, access car status information, and even gather driving history.
Accidental Exposure of Credentials
Since the organizations using cloud services are usually open to the customers via a shared link, there is a high chance of the credentials being leaked. If any of the users with the shared cloud link accidentally gets trapped by a cybercriminal by, say clicking a malicious link, an important credential can get leaked out of the organization.
3. Crime as a Service (CaaS)
The practice of trained cybercriminals selling access to the tools and skills necessary to carry out cybercrime is known as Crime-as-a-Service (CaaS). Large companies are increasingly outsourcing software services to safeguard systems they can’t defend, and hackers are doing the same. When a professional criminal or a gang of professional criminals develop advanced tools and bundled services, they sell or rent them to less experienced criminals.
This has a substantial influence on the criminal justice system, notably in the field of cybercrime, because it reduces the barrier to large-scale cyber-attacks by unskilled persons. Three of the most popular criminal software toolkits for deployment in the digital underworld are Bugat, ZeUs builder, and Spy-eye. These tools employ cutting-edge technology to carry out a wide range of damaging and unlawful activities, such as stealing data and compromising bank account credentials.
4. DDoS Attacks
If you run a business of any scale, consider the scenario where your sales are going great and the analytics are pretty high. Sounds amazing right? But what if the scenario turns around suddenly one day when you open your analytics just to find out that no sales have been made recently? You check your URL but it doesn’t seem to work.
What happens is that your company’s popularity leads to a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. This emerging cyber security threat is a deliberate attempt to interrupt your usual business operations. Malicious software, malware, or even hardware might be used by the attackers. Each of these infected devices is known as a Bot, and a Bot-net is formed when many bots merge and network. Bot-nets are built with one goal in mind: to take your online resources, such as your website, offline in order to reduce your business’s revenues by denying customers access.
To wrap it all
While there have been some amazing innovations made in the cyber-world and much more is expected in the coming days, cyber-criminals aren’t staying behind in their progress. We have mentioned above some of the major emerging Cyber Security threats that you need to be aware of in the years to come.
