Tomorrow’s Cyber-attacks could Pale Sci-fi Movies

Just when you think you’ve heard everything about cyber attacks, here’s something right out of a sci-fi movie! According to Gartner, cyber attackers will have weaponized operational technology (OT) environments to successfully harm or kill humans by 2025.

Do we still have a few more years to gear up? Not really! Cyber-crime is estimated to hit USD 6 trillion globally in 2021. As though that isn’t alarming enough, the costs are projected to grow by 15 percent annually in the next five years, to reach USD 10.5 trillion by 2025, according to a recent report by Cybersecurity Ventures. As we continue to use computing devices, we are in a daily battle with cyber criminals even without our realization. This battlefield evolves every day to become stronger and more sophisticated to beat our defenses, which are then further ungraded to keep the criminals at bay.

According to a recent Booz Allen report, tomorrow’s advanced cyber threats are already here. The report lists key 8 cyber threat trends for 2021:

1. Next-generation extortion and evolution in malware business models
2. Supply chain attacks via cloud-hosted development environments
3. AI, evasion, and theft
4. Parcel and shipping as critical infrastructure
5. Mandated contact tracing apps may open doors for large-scale cyber attacks
6. Cybercriminals will likely capitalize on rapid U.S. telehealth adoption
7. 5G to expand the attack surface for industrial IOT
8. 5G to increase security pressure on mobile hotspots.

So, what are we up against?

The most recent cyber-attacks have caused widespread damage, resulting in panic. Many industry leaders were in the news recently for the wrong reasons! UK based law firm Gateley was attacked recently, resulting in data breach. In the US, JBS, the biggest processor of meat in the country, was attacked by ransomware, taking it off grid. In New Zealand, Waikato District Health Board suffered from a cyber-attack causing complete outage of its IT systems. In India, Air India suffered a data breach of 4500000 flyers globally. These headlines are simply the tip of the iceberg.

Are you geared up to protect yourself and your business from cyber-attacks of the future? Do reach out to Accodian contact@accodian.com to find out how we can help you.