The Emerging Cybersecurity Trends In 2023

Data has evolved as an essential resource of an intelligent business, used for everything from daily operations to developing long-term plans. Data security becomes increasingly tricky as its value and business importance increase. Organizations are becoming aware of the need to devote time and resources to thwarting cyber risk as agility provided by the cloud has emerged as a significant driver of new technological breakthroughs.

The sophistication of the technology employed by threat actors has increased along with the number of threats. In the current landscape, these incidents are practically inevitable, and it is essentially now a matter of when they will occur rather than if they will occur. Companies thus need to be prepared and strengthen their response infrastructure. In this regard, innovation and technological integration is their greatest ally. Keeping this in mind, here are some of the emerging trends in the field of cybersecurity in 2023.

The increase in connectivity across the globe

The expansion of the Internet and increased penetration of smart devices has led to a landscape where industries have transcended geographical boundaries. As a result, any development, even in the remote corners of the world, affects the economic landscape globally. In other words, industries are interconnected, especially in terms of the information that they share, widening cyber networks and cyber risk. As a result, risk incidents have implications for each interconnected company, necessitating greater awareness and collaborative action from all stakeholders. In recognition of this interconnectedness, those in a position of power should extend support to smaller organizations.

Supply chain integration

Companies across the globe are dependent on supply chains to secure their essentials. They may include physical or digital infrastructure components and procuring services to help them run their business. These supply chains extend across multiple geographies and process chains. Given the number of stakeholders or stop points involved in the supply chain, it becomes challenging to safeguard it from threat actors. Therefore, monitoring third-party risks and potential real-time breaches in the supply chain is crucial for building resilience.

Increase in data extortion and ransomware incidents

In this day and age of digitization, the cyber footprint across industries has increased significantly, creating new attack avenues for threat actors. For example, ransomware refers to data encryption by threat actors so that the company cannot access critical information, thus disabling operations. Data extortion is similar to this, but, in this case, the data is not encrypted; but access is restricted. Threat actors then demand money to enable access.

The number of such attacks has ramped up over the years. Moreover, even small organizations are susceptible to it. Estimates suggest that these companies are at more risk, as they prove to be an easy target. Therefore, the need of the hour is to have a system that helps companies bounce back after such incidents. This may include identifying and patching the vulnerability, deploying cyber risk mitigation processes and best practices to prevent future attacks, and accessing the cyber posture to prepare and resume business operations quickly in case of an incident.

Bottom line

As the world moves towards a digitized future, cyber risk is the foremost concern for private individuals and organizations. Given the reliance on cyberspaces and the interconnected nature of the economy, a conundrum is in effect increased cyber presence is essential for development, yet, it exposes one to risks that impede progress. Therefore, when organizations expand, such threats and breaches are almost unavoidable. Thorough research and staying up to date with the advancements in the field are thus vitally important to counter such risks. Cyber resilience is therefore critical. A cyber resilience team rushes in for damage control when such an incident occurs. This may include threat analysis and performing patchwork where necessary. The goal is to mitigate risks, ensure operations are not impacted and prevent future breach incidents.