According to Statista’s report, the cybersecurity market to reach $273.50 billion by 2028. With the increasing frequency of data breaches, how they affect the industry and its customers becomes evident. Cybersecurity forecasts report by Google Cloud says that as organizations undergo digital transformation and integrate technology initiatives to achieve business success, excessive cybersecurity efforts can hinder overall progress.
Rightly said, cybersecurity requires constant balance, as there is a tug-of-war between security policies and convenience. 2024 is shaping to be a pivotal year, with threats becoming more sophisticated and organizations globally becoming more reachable to become breachable. The global cybersecurity sector is witnessing significant growth, with the workforce estimated at 4.7 million professionals, according to ISC2 reports.
Also read: c/side Launches to Protect the Browser Supply Chain from Zero-Day Attacks
Current Cybersecurity Challenges
- Ransomware: Ransomware malware is where the data on a victim’s computer is locked, and payment is demanded before the ransom data is unlocked. After successful payment, access rights are returned to the victim.
- Cloud attacks: Cloud computing has evolved exponentially recently. A cloud cyber attack includes malicious activities targeting an off-site service platform that provides storage, computing, or hosting services via its cloud infrastructure.
- Phishing: This attack involves stealing user data, credit card numbers, and login credentials.
- Insider attacks involve current or former employees who gain unauthorized access to the company’s data.
- Supply chain vulnerabilities: Engineering systems often rely on a complex network of suppliers and vendors. When targeting those supply chain networks, attackers compromise the integrity of products and services.
- AI attacks: AI in the workplace has both positive and negative implications for cybersecurity. Companies use AI to streamline their threat detection and response capabilities; likewise, cybercriminals use it to improve the effectiveness of attacks.
- Data breaches: Data breaches are a longstanding cybersecurity worry for organizations, risking brand reputation, profits, and legal consequences.
- Fileless malware: This type of malware does not require software installation on the operating system. It develops native files such as PowerShell and WMI that can be edited to enable malicious functions, making them recognized as legitimate and difficult to detect.
- Cryptojacking: Cryptojacking involves cyber criminals hijacking third-party computers and mining for cryptocurrency.
- Advanced persistent threats: If an individual or a group gains unauthorized entry to a network and stays undetected for a while, they might steal sensitive data without the organization’s security team noticing.
10 Global Cybersecurity Forecasts
#1 Hybrid and multi-cloud Environments Targetted Attacks
Attacks on hybrid and multi-cloud environments are projected to increase as such environments are now prevalent and a strategic asset for businesses. This trend results from increased connectivity and complexity, allowing attackers to gain development at multiple points and exploit many vectors.
In 2023, an incident concerning Mandiant and VMware underlined threats against cloud environments. Working together to fix a zero-day vulnerability, they fixed an exploit that allowed malicious actors to execute code within the guest virtual machines in a single hypervisor. Though contained, the incident highlighted tactics by threat actors are evolving, and organizations need to put a lot of emphasis on penetrating cloud infrastructures in order to establish persistence and pivot outward.
#2 Espionage and “sleeper botnets”
One of the major concerns in cyber espionage operations will be sleeper botnets. Espionage groups are projected to start leveraging sleeper botnets made up of a diversified mix of vulnerable devices, ranging from those in the Internet of Things (IoT) to small office, home office (SOHO) setups, and end-of-life routers. They will be harvested using both older and newer exploits, allowing the attackers to create these underground networks of compromised devices.
In contrast to usual botnets, which are mainly used to amplify attacks such as DDoS attacks, sleeper botnets would be used for a different purpose. They would sleep until they were needed for a specific operation. This will allow espionage groups to become more agile and flexible. Besides, these botnets would be expendable assets that would be thrown away once they are detected or have been used and are not useful anymore; thus, it complicates the tracking and attribution of malicious activities.
This will demand a proactive and multifaceted approach to defense. Organizations must enhance their vigilance in monitoring network activity, fortify device security protocols, and invest in advanced threat detection technologies.
#3 Consolidation around SecOps
Customer expectations have shifted to comprehensive security ecosystems that cover a customer’s full network infrastructure: cloud, multi-cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments. This demand is pegged on the increasing complexity of modern IT landscapes and the rise in cyber threats. Therefore, customers expect their vendors to deliver holistic solutions capable of meeting their security requirements seamlessly across different environments.
Moreover, in addition to their demand for integrated tools, customers are now looking for opinionated workflows, guidance, and pre-configured content from vendors to facilitate the implementation and optimization of their security programs. This is a statement of desire for out-of-the-box solutions to accelerate deployment and effectiveness in security measures.
In 2024, the consolidation of SecOps will most likely accelerate as vendors respond to these customer demands. This consolidation will enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of security operations and facilitate organizations’ better adaptation to the evolving threat landscape. Businesses, by embracing integrated solutions and standardizing workflows, will strengthen their cybersecurity postures to avert the risks brought about by increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.
#4 Use of zero-day vulnerabilities
The forecast in cybersecurity for the next period puts at the head of the list of threats the prevalence of zero-day vulnerabilities, particularly in combination with edge devices. Since 2012, there is a steep increase in the usage of zero-day vulnerabilities, and 2023 is to become a record breaker compared to the previous record set in 2021. Estimates demonstrate that this tendency will follow into 2024 when there will be a growth in zero-day exploitation by different threat actor classes.
One of the main drivers of the continued exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities is the intent of the attackers to gain long-term access to the attacked environments. In contrast to more straightforward, easily detectable methods of attack, such as phishing emails and deployment of malware, the exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities presents a way to establish persistent access, which allows threat actors to stay undetected in the attacked environment for longer than usual. Recent cases of mass extortion demonstrate the possibility of zero-day vulnerability exploitation for the sake of increasing the number of victims and the number of organizations who are ready to pay exorbitant ransomware or extortion.
Also read: Detection and Mitigation Techniques for Zero-day Vulnerabilities
#5 Serverless Services in the Cloud
In 2023, there was a remarkable increase in the deployment of crypto miners on serverless infrastructure, which showed a growing interest among threat actors in exploiting these platforms. Building off this trend, both cybercriminals and nation-state cyber operators will increasingly leverage serverless technologies within cloud environments in 2024.
The attractiveness of serverless architectures to attackers is, for the same reasons why legitimate developers are increasingly adopting them. The serverless services offer better scalability, flexibility, and automation capabilities than the traditional cloud services, hence bringing about several advantages that are fitting for modern software development practices. For the attackers, these features provide an efficient and adaptive infrastructure for deploying malicious payloads and conducting various cyber operations.
#6 Revival of Ancient Techniques
As attackers constantly innovate their techniques against detection, there will be a resurgence of ancient techniques, long forgotten. For example, in 2013, a researcher pointed out the use of undocumented SystemFunctionXXX functions instead of standard cryptographic functions available in the documented Windows API. This technique, though obscure at that moment, became mainstream in Q4 2022 when many security researchers started discussing it and posting code snippets through blogs and GitHub. Shortly after, the number of malware samples using this technique showed up on platforms like VirusTotal.
Recently, an anti-VM technique from a 2012 malware analysis book started being used. Although the technique is effective, it has not been taken into consideration very much in detection rules since hypervisors are not very frequently used in some geographies. So, attackers will exploit such forgotten techniques to slip through security and go undetected, proving the need to keep on one’s toes, so to speak, in the field of cybersecurity.
Also Read: AI Integration Roadmap Planning for Cybersecurity Experts
#7 Malware authors Migrating to Modern Programming languages
Malware authors will adopt programming languages such as Go, Rust, and Swift for their development efforts. This is driven by the properties offered by each language: a streamlined development experience, strong low-level capabilities, large standard libraries, and ease of integration with third-party packages.
These languages and their associated ecosystems ease the development of advanced malware, lowering costs and effort to create new malicious software designed to bypass detection. This means there will continue to be a rotating cast of different toolsets for malicious actors, and there will be a need to create new detection signatures to defeat emerging threats.
However, modern programming languages pose some challenges to security analysts. They tend to introduce larger runtime overheads, such as in Go, or utilize advanced compiler techniques, as in Rust, which make reverse engineering challenging. In short, these languages offer malware authors innate advantages for techniques such as packing and obfuscation without needing to implement explicit protection mechanisms.
#8 Growing Frequency of Mobile Cybercrime
In 2024, according to the Google Cloud Cybersecurity Forecast reporter, it is anticipated that cybercriminals will continue to employ novel social engineering tactics. The techniques include messages from fake social media accounts, simulating domestic help services, and spoofed pop-up alerts to trick victims into installing malicious applications on their mobile devices
#9 Extortion Operations will Remain Most Notorious
Hackers will continue to either attack your system, threaten to release private information or take control of some or all of your network even in 2024 and in the future. Extortion operations will remain the most impactful form of cybercrime to organizations and societies globally. Although the growth was stagnant during 2022, advertisements for stolen data and extortion revenue estimates indicate that this threat is again growing from 2023 and will continue in 2024 without significant, market-wide disruption.
#10 Supply chain attacks via software package managers
Developers targeted in supply chain attacks through package managers is a cybersecurity concern that can happen. Recently, supply chain attacks against NPM (Node.js package manager) including IconBurst have displayed how threat actors target software developers. For instance, the developer is compromised by installing a malicious package that allows threat actor access to the developer’s source. Which can result in a low-cost and high-impact attack. The impact of such attacks continues to grow as threat actors shift to other less monitored package managers.
Cybersecurity Statistics to Know in 2024
- According to CybersecurtyVenture’s findings, Global ransomware damage costs were predicted to reach $20 billion annually in 2021, up from $325 million in 2015, a 57X increase. In eight years from now, the costs will exceed $265 billion.
- Cybersecurity Ventures predicts the cyber insurance market will grow from approximately $8.5 billion in 2021 to $14.8 billion in 2025 and exceed $34 billion by 2031, based on a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 15 percent over 11 years (2020 to 2031) calculated.
- Cybersecurity Ventures predicted that a business fell victim to a ransomware attack every 11 seconds in 2021, up from every 14 seconds in 2019. This makes ransomware the fastest-growing type of cybercrime. The frequency of ransomware attacks on governments, businesses, consumers, and devices will continue to rise over the next 8 years and reach every two seconds by 2031.
Conclusion
Where new technologies will support security teams, they will also drive an extension of the attack surface. In 2024, the rapidly emerging world of gen AI will empower attackers to mount convincing phishing campaigns and information operations at scale. But defenders will leverage the same technologies to advance detection, response, and attribution of adversaries—and more broadly reduce workload, address threat overload, and narrow the growing skills gap. Companies will need to be prepared for global activity related to the myriad major events being hosted. Also, as major global conflicts extend into the next year, expect increased levels of disruptive hacktivism. The cybersecurity landscape is constantly changing, sometimes in new and unexpected ways. Defenders, often with resource limitations, shoulder the monumental task of keeping up.
[To share your insights with us as part of editorial or sponsored content, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]
