People on all levels are still making attempts to adopt the new “normal” that COVID-19 presented to the world. It became painfully obvious that companies were not prepared for the massive remote work that was required and cybercriminals took full advantage as the virus crept throughout the globe. The pandemic presented unforeseen problems beyond just the massive illnesses and deaths. To maintain any form of civilisation and keep people fed, companies had to make complete changes in their daily methods, and this exposed huge vulnerabilities that we are still combatting. While there has been a 50% increase in cyberattacks year over year, the hardest hit were healthcare, research, and education. While everyone was focused on filling those holes, cybercriminals turned their attention to the gaps caused by the pandemic.
Supply Chain Vulnerability
The most well-known attack on supply chain occurred with the SolarWinds’ breach. The discovery of the Sunburst malware and the resulting investigations exposed other malware variants and the intense campaign launched over 18,000 organisations in both private and public sectors. While high-profile attacks may make the news, there are thousands of lower-profile attacks that continue on a daily basis as threat actors expand and amplify their reach.
Two Years In – Remote Work is at Risk
Very few companies were prepared for an almost 100% remote work force, and this means that they had little to nothing in place to protect staff devices and their networks. Even the expansion into cloud adoption has done little for security as organisations haven’t put in place the kind of strict guidelines for staff and their computers. This is where a professional cybersecurity team comes into play. With continued remote work it is imperative that employees have a set of guidelines and training to understand and comply with steps to protect themselves and company data.
Targeting Saas and Cloud Services
Saas (Software as a Service) was becoming more popular prior to the pandemic, however, COVID pushed many of these software products over the edge as they were easier to use in a remote condition. Online meetings and file sharing were fused with Cloud services and knowing this, cybercriminals quickly adapted their attack methods to target their vulnerabilities. Even Microsoft was caught when, in September, 2021, it was discovered that there was a vulnerability with OMIGOD and their OMI (Open Management Infrastructure) was exploited within Azure Vms that allowed attacks against 65% of the Azure customers. A patch was quickly created and dispatched, but this was just one high-profile case against many.
Ransomware is Having a Field Day
While ransomware had small beginnings, attacking individual computers, the threat actors realised that the big profits were in the high visibility and critical organisations. Their attacks switched to utility companies and health organisations, those that could be life or death situations if they were taken down. The cybercriminals have made so much profit that they are taking advantage of the lack of knowledge about ransomware and focusing on some of the biggest companies in the world.
“We believe knowledge is power, and in fighting the good fight against cyber threat actors, DaVinci Cybersecurity ensures that our clients have education as their tool and know what the cybersecurity enemies look like. As the criminals up their game, we work to make sure that our customers know what to look for in protecting their critical data.”
Sharon Knowles, CEO DaVinci Cybersecurity
Source: checkpoint.com/cyber-hub/cyber-security/what-is-cybersecurity/biggest-cybersecurity-challenges-in-2022/
