Sophos’ Andrew Brandt stated that the cryptocurrency industry is fueling threats such as malicious cybercrime and ransomware attacks. What can companies do to protect themselves from such attacks?
Cybersecurity incidents are among the biggest threats facing the world in the next decade. Threats such as ransomware or data theft are the result of weaknesses in an organization’s security posture. No matter how small the attacks start, organizations suffer huge losses if they are not dealt with in a timely manner.
We have prepared three major threats that will pose a cybersecurity risk in 2022.
1. Ransomware Will Be The Biggest Cybersecurity Risk Next Year
In 2021, four out of five customers of Sophos’ Rapid Response team reportedly faced this threat. Ransomware is expected to remain a fairly common threat this year due to changes in the business model of criminals.
Policies that separate networks, apply multi-factor authentication (MFA) to critical systems, and transition to a trust computing model can all improve your security posture. More importantly, advocates should quickly investigate the warnings, as any intrusion can become a pillar that could lead to loss of control of entire networks.
2. Cybercrime such as ransomware and malicious cryptocurrency mining will continue to fuel the cryptocurrency industry, and this trend is predicted to continue until cryptocurrencies are regulated.
The value of cryptocurrency will continue to encourage cybercrime, which includes not only ransomware but also malicious cryptocurrency mining and purchase of cryptocurrency. Whenever new server-side vulnerabilities arise, threat actors take advantage of them to spread the covert cryptocurrency mining software to as many machines as possible, and the exploits that can carry out these attacks continue indefinitely.
To prevent malicious cryptocurrency miners from taking hold in the network, organizations need to ensure they have defense-in-depth security (such as MFA and the use of virtual local area networks to separate network segments) and reduce the number of inbound methods. As few people as possible need to reach the corporate network.
3. Various forms of extortion are expected to continue to be used by ransomware attackers to force victims to pay ransom, and the range is expected to increase in intensity.
By 2022, both the scope and intensity of ransomware attacks are expected to increase.
Ransomware attackers are expected to expand their use of alternative methods to force their victims to pay ransom, to identify at least 10 different tactics such as distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks to extract and threaten to expose data stolen from the organization. Some criminals are even brave enough to call their victims over the phone and demand payment.
To minimize the impact of cyberattacks, companies should invest resources in strengthening corporate defenses and disaster recovery efforts; Make frequent data backups and combine experts and anti-ransomware technology. In addition, companies need to come up with a malware recovery plan that undergoes constant testing and updates to help them get back on their feet as soon as possible.