In January we tend to make new years resolutions for the news year. However it is also a time to look to the new year and what the new trends will be. In this blog Tech-Wales gives you an overview of the cyber security trends and risks for 2024.
Number of zero-day attacks is increasing
Companies are still too slow to patch vulnerabilities, especially in small and medium-sized businesses. The main cause is that there is insufficient expertise in-house to carry out updates on time. Also, there is not always a sense of urgency to implement available patches. If you wait longer than 48 hours after release to install a patch on a server connected to the Internet, the risk of a cyber attack increases exponentially.
It is important for organisations to adjust their update and patch policy accordingly, if necessary with the help of external experts. In addition, an increase in zero-day attacks that exploit vulnerabilities for which no patches are yet available is expected.
Physical wars have their digital repercussions
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is one of the largest military conflicts in the Western world in recent decades. This battle is not only physical, there is also a major cyber war raging. This war also includes digital victims who are not directly involved in the conflict itself.
Consider internationally operating companies that have an office in Ukraine. As long as the conflict continues, this type of collateral damage will remain a reality. Since the war in Ukraine does not appear to be coming to an end anytime soon, we can expect even more unintended collateral damage in 2024. We see the same problems recurring in other conflicts and wars in the world.
The developments surrounding AI continue
It was hard to ignore it in 2023 that AI keeps developing and used more and more in day to day life. We can expect further developments in 2024. Cybercriminals have also discovered the benefits of AI: phishing emails are becoming increasingly difficult to recognise and are therefore becoming increasingly effective.
Developments in the field of voice cloning and fake videos will also be followed with interest by malicious parties. In 2024, we will increasingly hear of cybercriminals turning to AI for help. This will mainly involve cybercrime that targets a specific target.
Global events will increase hackers activity
Sports fans will have the summer of 2024 firmly circled in their agenda, including the Summer Olympics in Paris and the European Football Championship in Germany. Hackers also have these events on their radar. Expect a fair share of hackers activity during the sports summer: DDoS attacks, official websites that go black or show an alternative message. The American presidential (primary) elections and the elections for the European Parliament are also expected to trigger a fair amount of cyber activity.
Quest for zero-trust continues
In recent years we have seen the increasing popularity of zero-trust as a standard method to gain access to a network or functionalities. This popularity will also increase in the new year. But we actually need an even stronger tool, because zero-trust is not the solution for everything. Although zero-trust significantly increases standard security, there are scenarios where it still does not provide sufficient protection. For example, hackers and cybercriminals can obtain the login details of users with administrative rights by breaking multi-factor authentication (MFA) via a session cookie theft, a man-in-the-middle attack or a so-called MFA fatigue attack. This allows them to still gain access to internal data and the entire network. The protection of data itself, and not just the focus on access to that data, therefore remains important – also in 2024.
Tech-Wales Business ICT Experts
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