Top cybersecurity trends for 2022

New year, new challenges? Technically, yes. 

2021 brought new solutions, tools, and services to the cybersecurity trends to overcome continuously increasing threats of hostile actors. Yet, the risks are only growing and evolving, leaving no rest for businesses trying to secure their data assets and service performance to avoid reputational and financial damage. 

Digital resilience is as vital as ever

The cybersecurity landscape is constantly improving to mitigate potential security risks. However, it is a great challenge to keep up with the ever-changing environment — businesses have to find agile solutions to establish sustainable functioning quickly and efficiently. Otherwise, not taking timely and comprehensive actions might result in snowballing issues.

Cybersecurity trends: cause & effect

According to World Bank insights, during the pandemic only, hybrid work, distributed workforces, and remote collaboration will double the yearly internet traffic in 2022 compared to the beginning of the COVID-19 era. This data highlights a load of user connections, shared information, and access requests that require security supervision.

The blurred lines of the office definition make it much harder to oversee who is operating within the company network. As stated in Earthweb’s Key Remote Work Statistics for 2022, 55% of global brands have integrated hybrid or fully remote work policies into business operations. Off-site user activity within the network requires additional updates to company infrastructure.

Meanwhile, predictions and estimations by Gartner acknowledge ransomware attacks as the No.1 cybersecurity threat to businesses of any size and industry. Motivated by financial gains, attackers get more sophisticated, dissecting through weak security mesh, supposed to protect the company. It means security systems must get as intelligent to maintain high-security levels.

What to expect from the 2022 cybersecurity trends?

In 2022 cybersecurity remains an inexhaustible topic to research, enhance, and discuss. Companies should consider putting up a fight against malicious activities targeted at their businesses’ and customers’ well-being. Therefore, different safety angles have to be taken into consideration — here is a list of top cybersecurity trends that are at the center of attention in 2022.

1. Cybersecurity hygiene

Cybersecurity trends showcase how IT infrastructure must be resilient. Only specific and clearly defined practices performed within different organization levels will give the desired results to maintain high enterprise security levels.

‘Password123’ is still not a password in 2022

A lazy and careless digital security approach is weak, easy-to-hack, and scribbled on post-it memos passwords that expose security vulnerabilities. A periodic reminder for employees to renew and use different complex passwords, enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), and centralized management will become even more popular for a more trusted environment.

Audit to improve

Implementation of organizational security policies requires ongoing performance monitoring and analysis. Insights provide data on planning and executing adaptive control models for effective compliance practices that achieve a systematic risk management culture, easy to understand and improve over time and ad-hoc business needs, detect and find gaps with comprehensive solutions.

The distribution of a unified and cohesive framework over how watertight and reliable security systems run within the organization will focus on security practices like zero trust. Routine filtering and verification of identities, endpoint, and traffic flow will assist in keeping a clean record of protecting networks from data breaches.

2. Mobility & mobile security

IT security trends confirm hybrid work policy will be one of the post-pandemic relicts organizations are likely to keep within their working pattern. Workforce mobility is convenient, practical, and efficient by any means. Yet it also requires another security layer as typical working setup and conditions changed together. 

Remote work and cybersecurity crossroads

Working from anywhere (WFA) diluted the organization's HQ perimeter centralization to a global network spread. Naturally, poor concentration is more challenging to control; thus, security measures need to be patched and updated to adhere truly modern company presence.

Unprotected public networks and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy increase the exposure to various risks of network security vulnerability. Alternatives of user identity verification are mandatory as it cannot be confirmed face to face anymore, and endpoint security health determines the overall company security status.

3. Cloud security

Cloud computing has been a hot topic for a while, and the upcoming year is no exception. With distributed workforces and growing cloud-based infrastructure capabilities, the number of businesses transitioning to cloud environments will continue increasing. Combining different services and applications with a simple and inexpensive deployment is prioritized over hardware infrastructure.

Agility and resilience of cloud technologies are instrumental in a current digital off-site business environment that needs to adapt to constant change and extension of the network perimeter. On the other hand, the high demand for cloud environments is a challenge for quality delivery. Often cloud-based services are provided by third parties that also have to ensure secure performance capacity.

The amount of data stored on the clouds will exceed 100 zettabytes (1 ZT = 1 billion TB) by 2025. Indeed an enormous load of information requires supervision and data protection since cybercriminals start seeing cloud-stored data as the primary target. 

Massive migration to cloud environments doesn’t mitigate the risk of foe activities against companies and service providers. Understanding the particularities of how cloud-native platforms need to be maintained requires knowledge and experience from responsible company teams. According to Secure Works, insufficient cloud configurations may lead to higher exposure to threats.

4. Value of the people resource

The people factor remains an ongoing issue businesses will have to cope with during the upcoming year. Securing sensitive data depends not only on systems and tools but also on who operates it; thus, human resource and their knowledge play a crucial role in preventing — or even enabling — security gaps within the company network.

Increasing talent shortage

Shortage of technical staff is a problem as the importance of digitalization expands from industry to industry — any modern company is almost impossible to imagine without an IT  department. 

However, the ever-evolving cybersecurity landscape requires skilled employees to drive the digital company successfully. The high demand for IT professionals creates barriers hard to overcome with a limited number of hands for the job. 

Gartner's survey showed that the talent issue uncovers how hard it is for businesses to keep up with the adaptation of novel technologies — in a year from 2020 to 2021, the gap skyrocketed by 60% because of shortage of qualified employees capable of adapting the latest technologies targeted at handling internal and external cybersecurity threats.

Plenty of room for human error

Having highly skilled employees to cover specific tasks within the organization is just a tiny part compared with the rest of the employee base that functions a close encounter with sensitive information often remains clueless about securing company data. Lack of discipline in acting, reacting, and avoiding putting company assets at risk depends on knowledge.

To prevent data breaches, consistent and sufficient training, continuous learning, and implementation of supporting applications as tools to maintain awareness of employee roles and responsibilities will be among organizational priorities. Knowledge enables staff to successfully identify phishing attacks, social engineering, losing credentials, and taking extra steps to prevent human error.

5. Proactive security with AI

Automatization helps companies maintain business performance with lower staff and technical skill resources. The supporting role of automated traffic management and control significantly impacts the company network's visibility and processes. It identifies deviations from standard activity patterns and timely alerts responsible units to engage with relevant policies.

Attention to AI and machine learning

Implementation of automated security systems allows detecting the fact of malicious content corrupt devices or notify over suspicious user activity to prevent damage of potential data breaches but not necessarily predict it. Foreseeing possible paths of attackers is where cybersecurity is leaning for lately, and technologies gain more and more potential to utilize it. 

The momentum of cyberattacks brings a lot of uncertainty as a company doesn’t know the advantage hackers have in their hands. The only way to learn about what to expect and prepare for the impact is to roadmap how cyberattackers act. Artificial intelligence (AI) benefits businesses in analyzing and simulating possible situations. 

McKinsey survey reports that 56% of business respondents confirm implementing AI-powered function, a +6% increase since last year. AI benefits companies by creating algorithms of attack scenarios, invoking strategy outcomes to find the least damaging risk management approach, and preparing incident response plans. Systems confronting familiar patterns enable intuitive and rapid response before the attack reaches its target. 

Rise of the ransomware attacks

Technology is evolving, so businesses need to understand the advantages AI brings to the table as malicious attacks are developing rapidly. Ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) is the most recent trend in the cybercrime landscape, making the number of controlled attacks even denser. According to World Economic Forum, ransomware attacks are the “second-highest concern of cyber leaders.” 

Cybercriminals are getting more sophisticated, constantly searching for a crack in systems security. The growing complexity of IoT (Internet of Things) networks and 5G broadband brings novelty of unexplored possibilities criminals might use against their victims — thinking ahead and timely implementing effective solutions may prevent the data breach everyone is exposed to.

Tips of cybersecurity trends for businesses 

Annual cybersecurity trends give a whole picture of where the technology is heading forward and point at essential aspects of securing business that might feel overwhelming. To crystalize the cornerstones of secure network and data, answer what your company has already established and prioritize implementing the most efficient and effective solutions that are still lacking.

There is no doubt that investment in protected business environments pays off much more than risking facing a cyber-attack — it takes down financial gains and the reputation of a company. As the cybersecurity latest trends indicate, any business should seek a simple, comprehensive, and easy deployment solution that can scale up and down according to ad-hoc company needs. 

How can NordLayer help your business in 2022?

Cyber tendencies in 2022 are more or less relevant to every business searching for cybersecurity solutions. 

A modern remote network access solution like NordLayer is developed to integrate threat, network, and security management in a centralized manner to provide an explicit range of issue-targeted features. Especially with the help of convenient design that combines cloud-based platforms, data privacy protection, and access control security strategies. 

NordLayer covers limited IT staff issues with a centralized control interface and product integration to existing infrastructure. It provides secure remote access solutions for hybrid environments and implements zero-trust for distributed workforces conveying everything to the cloud environment.

Achieve multilayered security protection network and data environment — secure your business in 2022 with NordLayer — reach out to talk more.