KnowBe4’s Team of Cybersecurity Experts Release Top Five Predictions for 2023
Anticipated Rise in Devastating Infrastructure Attacks
Experts predict an increase in devastating strikes on important infrastructure. Additionally, they anticipate significant outages as hackers target essential infrastructure, particularly amidst the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. This could have societal and economic repercussions for a sizable population or even an entire country. People might engage in digital civil disobedience by attacking their own national infrastructure or government websites as a means of protest in response to the global recession and rising cost of living.
Surge in Social Media Frauds
A surge in social media fraud represents a new field of social engineering combat. Scammers will proliferate on social media, endangering friends, family, organizations, and coworkers. As the social media commerce and marketplace industries continue to expand, people will increasingly rely on indicators of trust, such as the number of connections an account has and its activity duration, making them more vulnerable to scams that use stolen social media accounts to deceive. Scammers will undoubtedly exploit the fact that official verification is now available for a low cost on various platforms.
Emphasis on Establishing a Security Culture
There is a shift in emphasis toward establishing a security culture across enterprises worldwide. Most businesses now recognize the importance of security awareness training, and many are beginning to shift their focus from training alone to including behavior and culture. Building a robust security culture with the backing of leaders and the entire staff base has gained positive momentum globally.
Rise of Dangerous Deepfake Assaults
Dangerous deepfake assaults will become more convincing and harmful to reputations. Deepfakes are a risky method of gaining someone’s trust by getting them to take words and actions at face value in front of gullible individuals. Organizations do not yet adequately educate their personnel about the subject because they lack a thorough awareness of the risks this can pose to their reputation.
Expanding Attack Surface in the Metaverse
The increased attack surface of the Metaverse brings new dangers. It is becoming harder to fully secure enterprises worldwide due to more danger vectors, leading to a bigger attack surface. Cybercriminals now have additional options to launch assaults due to the growth of the Metaverse.
Stu Sjouwerman, CEO of KnowBe4, emphasized, “This list of predictions in cybersecurity trends has been gathered from our global group of experts who have decades of experience in the cybersecurity field. They are at the forefront of what is happening in the industry, constantly following trends and staying up to date on the latest threats, tools, and techniques. Many of them noted a fundamental shift in focus for organizations beyond security awareness training alone to striving for a strong security culture that is driven by measurable behavioral change. Also, social engineering will continue to dominate as an overwhelmingly successful method for cybercriminals to execute attacks.”