For the incoming new year, cybersecurity solutions provider Fortinet said it is anticipating the focus of exploits falling on work-from-anywhere setups, 5G-enabled edge, and satellite Internet off-planet.
These predictions are largely based on data sourced from the firm’s FortiGuard Labs global threat intelligence and research team and includes recommendations on how enterprises can stay ahead from threat actors leveraging on the new trends of exploit. FortiGuard Labs’ chief of Security Insights & Global Threat Alliances Derek Manky advised organizations to adopt a Security Fabric platform founded on a cybersecurity mesh architecture.
“Cybercriminals are evolving and becoming more like traditional APT groups; zero-day equipped, destructive, and able to expand their techniques as needed to achieve their goals. We will see attacks spanning further outside of the extended network, even into space, as attackers take advantage of a fragmented perimeter, siloed teams and tools as well as a greatly expanded attack surface. These threats will leave overwhelmed IT teams scrambling to cover every possible avenue of attack,” Manky explained further.
Before diving into the execution phase of attacks, Fortinet expects cybercriminals to spend more time and effort on reconnaissance and discovering zero-day capabilities to exploit, ensuring more successful attacks even on newer technologies. This behavior will significantly increase in damage dealt and frequency due to the rise of Crime-as-a-Service market.
Ransomware will also be a key player going forward, even now when attackers are already combining ransomware with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) to overwhelm IT teams and disabling their mitigation abilities, and wiper malware that destroys data and hardware as seen during the Tokyo Olympics.
Other emerging trends include utilization of AI to master deep fakes for enhanced social engineering attacks, development of botnet malware for Linux platforms, targeting of newer areas like remote work and online learning, expanding attack efforts to satellite-based Internet access and digital wallets, and prioritizing the booming industry of e-sports.
With a cybersecurity mesh architecture, IT teams can integrate security controls into, and across, widely distributed networks and assets, together with a “Security Fabric” approach that benefits from an integrated security platform that safeguards on-prem, data center, on the cloud, and at the edge assets. Fortinet views close collaborations among all sectors and types of organizations as vital to enabling more effective responses and better prediction of future techniques to deter adversary efforts.
