In recent years, the cybersecurity landscape has undergone a remarkable transformation, significantly impacting our threat mitigation approach.
In the ever-evolving landscape of cybersecurity, reflecting on the past and foreseeing the future is paramount to staying ahead of the curve. As we embark on a new year, we are here to share insights from industry leaders at Fulcrum Digital, NetApp, and Sophos. They have provided a retrospective view of 2023 and offered their expert opinions on the upcoming cybersecurity trends that are set to shape 2024.
Fulcrum Digital: AI-Driven Cybersecurity
“In recent years, the cybersecurity landscape has undergone a remarkable transformation, significantly impacting our threat mitigation approach. The surge in sophisticated threats prompted us to adopt an agile stance. Leveraging AI-powered threat intelligence and predictive analytics has been pivotal in anticipating and countering evolving risks. Transitioning from traditional models to adaptive, intelligence-driven strategies has been instrumental. The surge in remote work and extensive cloud reliance have compelled us to ensure robust cloud security measures. Throughout this evolution, our firm commitment remains—to empower clients with cutting-edge approaches like Zero Trust frameworks and instill a predictive and robust security culture. Our journey accentuates the imperative of staying ahead in this dynamic threat environment while ensuring our clients are confidently equipped to navigate these changes.” Vaibhav Tare, Chief Information Security Officer, Fulcrum Digital
NetApp: A Shortage of Cybersecurity Talent
“In recent years, we’ve observed a dynamic evolution in the cybersecurity landscape. The ever-growing complexity of cyber threats has required us to adopt a proactive and adaptive approach to security. Recognizing the industry-wide shortage of cybersecurity talent, we actively contribute to addressing this gap through educational initiatives, collaboration with academic institutions, and programs like bootcamps that demonstrate our commitment to skill development. In alignment with this evolution, my role as Chief Security Officer at NetApp has undergone a significant transformation. Our commitment to integrating security into every facet of the organization, coupled with ongoing education and strategic partnerships, fortifies our adaptive cybersecurity posture. Going forward, we would remain dedicated to staying ahead of emerging threats through innovation and strategic investments in cybersecurity.” Mignona Cote, Chief Security Officer, NetApp
Sophos: Growing Threat of Ransomware Attacks
“If history has taught us anything, the 2024 threat landscape will look a lot like the 2023 threat landscape, but more efficient and with opportunistic twists and turns. Criminals are out for only one thing: money. They will continue to ransom and extort their way to infamy and wealth. Where we see variances is around what most easily enables this criminal activity. Year over year, we see shifts back and forth between exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities and using stolen credentials to gain access to victims’ networks. When there is a fresh vulnerability available and it is somewhat easy to exploit, as we have recently observed with Citrix Bleed (the CVE-2023-4966 flaw being exploited by ransomware crews in Citrix NetScaler), they will take advantage. Once all the victims are patched or already compromised, they will fall back to the slightly less efficient method of credential theft. As organizations have increasingly adopted multifactor authentication, criminals have begun to develop more sophisticated bypasses and have turned to stealing cookies and session cookies instead.
2023 showed a lot of advancement in abusing supply chains to compromise victims as well. Whether through the compromise of managed service providers (MSPs), file sharing appliances, or authentication providers, sometimes the easiest way to break in is through the back door. As we continue to harden our own networks and adopt more “as-a-service” models, we can expect attacks like this to increase throughout 2024.
As multifactor authentication becomes more ubiquitous, we will continue to see the use of malicious proxies like evilginx and social engineering to convince end-users and IT support staff to grant attackers access. Groups like LAPSU$ and Scattered Spider have captured everyone’s attention with their success in gaining access to major brand names throughout 2022 and 2023, and this will likely inspire more people to borrow pages from their playbook.
I think we will see major governments around the world take more substantiative action to thwart ransomware groups as people’s day-to-day lives are increasingly impacted when hospitals, schools, law offices, and banks are unable to operate due to cyberattack-related downtime. It’s hard to say whether this will be effective, but we are reaching a point where people will begin to demand something be done.” Chester Wisniewski, Global Field CTO, Sophos
Do Follow: CIO News LinkedIn Account | CIO News Facebook | CIO News Youtube | CIO News Twitter
About us:
CIO News, a proprietary of Mercadeo, produces award-winning content and resources for IT leaders across any industry through print articles and recorded video interviews on topics in the technology sector such as Digital Transformation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Cloud, Robotics, Cyber-security, Data, Analytics, SOC, SASE, among other technology topics.
