Five bold cybersecurity predictions for 2024

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

All through its historical past, the cybersecurity business has continually reacted to attacker pivots in addition to operational actuality shifts, and the brand new 12 months can be no totally different. The cat-and-mouse recreation between attackers and defenders is certain to accentuate and change into extra advanced as newer applied sciences like AI and the cloud change the cybersecurity panorama.

Add different components, comparable to extra aggressive authorities motion on cybersecurity risks and the 2024 election, and the brand new 12 months is shaping up as notably dynamic.

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

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

The world has been speaking about exponential progress 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 bounce by 42% within the subsequent 12 months and improve by a staggering 7X within the subsequent 5 years.

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

In at present’s multifaceted know-how panorama, enterprises face a brand new problem. Information generated in software-as-a-service (SaaS) methods climbed 145% within the final 12 months, 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 can be a serious cybersecurity focus for a lot of organizations subsequent 12 months. Extra will acknowledge that your complete safety assemble has shifted: It’s not about defending particular person castles however moderately an interconnected caravan.

2: Attackers will broaden their assaults on virtualized infrastructure

As organizations develop extra subtle in defending conventional targets comparable to computer systems and cell gadgets, some dangerous actors have already pivoted to attempting to penetrate different infrastructure elements comparable to SaaS and Linux purposes, APIs and bare-metal hypervisors.

In a telling signal of the risk, VMWare warned earlier this 12 months that attackers exploited vulnerabilities in its ESXi hypervisor and elements to deploy ransomware. Different stories through 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” economic system that quickly pivots to recognized successes. 

Lastly, these kinds of 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 gadgets will develop as a goal for “boutique” hacker teams

In September, U.S. and Japanese authorities companies announced that hackers linked to the Folks’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 12 months: Authorities intrusion teams viewing assaults on edge gadgets as a technique to differentiate themselves from garden-variety ransomware gangs.

As a result of these sorts of intrusions take appreciable technological prowess, are sometimes troublesome to detect and may do an excessive amount of injury, they’re nearly undoubtedly a significant separator throughout cyber threats.

Edge gadgets nearly actually can be a serious cybersecurity battlefront in 2024 and can present a possibility for hacker teams to point out off their capabilities. There can be teams that may pull this off (and can). To push this prediction all the best way to the sting (pun supposed), authorities applications 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

For those who suppose you haven’t already heard loads about AI’s potential for cybersecurity, simply wait till 2024. AI will be front and center 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 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 Middle for Justice calls 2024 the primary presidential election of the generative AI period. Candidates seemingly might want to handle the “AI anxiety” that many citizens really feel. And, concern is rampant that the know-how may very well be used to spread disinformation by way of deepfakes and AI-generated voices.

I consider there’s nearly no state of affairs the place AI-driven deepfakes received’t be a part of the pending U.S. Presidential election amongst others. 

We’ll additionally hear extra in regards to the position AI can play in fixing the persistent cybersecurity talent gap, with AI-powered methods taking up increasingly of the routine operations in safety operations facilities. 

On the subject of cybersecurity in 2024, AI can be all over the place.

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

In late October, the Securities and Alternate Fee announced fees in opposition to 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 grievance 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 a few years of probation and ordered him to pay a $50,000 advantageous after a jury discovered him responsible of two felonies. Sullivan had been charged with protecting up a ransomware assault whereas Uber was below investigation by the Federal Commerce Fee for earlier lapses in knowledge safety.

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

On high of all that, new SEC rules 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 wanting over their shoulder in 2024. As if defending their organizations from dangerous actors wasn’t difficult sufficient, now they should pay extra consideration to documenting completely every thing. The CISO position will tackle a heavier regulatory compliance taste.

Your entire C-suite may also seemingly must recalibrate their non-public/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 non-public 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 occasionally result in a demonstrable shift in how senior leaders communicate of, and with, governments.

As these 5 predictions present, 2024 needs to be an particularly fascinating 12 months within the cybersecurity area. The brand new 12 months is upon us, and I’m buckling up for the journey.

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