Cyber security trends and threats have changed a lot over the years. Trends are constantly being reshaped by the emergence of new tools and technologies, and malicious attacks have grown in number, variety, and complexity.
The key problems for 2023 (and beyond) will vary a little depending on your industry sector and what your company’s most valuable assets are, your crown jewels if you will.

But there are a few noteworthy ones that we take a closer look at.

The war in Ukraine has raised concerns at government level significantly. Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) is being targeted by hackers throughout the conflict, with power plants and transport networks being attacked. This has led to a focus on building up defences for CNI in many different countries and industries. This, coupled with the rise of cybercrime and data theft, means that companies have been investing heavily in their cyber security systems to protect themselves from attack.

The name of the game has been how to tighten security against bespoke and complex attacks. In addition to this, businesses are taking steps to protect themselves against threats such as ransomware attacks, which have become increasingly common over recent years.

Employers had to quickly adapt to enable their workforce to work from home through numerous lockdowns, in a bid to keep businesses operational during the pandemic. The immense requirement to pivot IT infrastructure and connectivity rapidly, will have no doubt lead to shortcuts and allowances being made, forsaking some cyber security parameters.

In fact, the Mobile Security Index 2021 reported that 40% of companies see mobile devices as their biggest security risk, and over three-quarters had come under pressure to sacrifice mobile device security to help meet deadlines and other business goals.

IT teams are now still shoring up and validating these wider networks, in a bid to tighten up security and remove any vulnerabilities.
As there has been an increase in incidents of hacking at home (breaking into home networks), fortifying devices on company systems and infrastructure, is critical.

Conventional VPNs are no longer fit for purpose, so options like Zero Trust Networks are employed.
Zero trust network access (ZTNA) allows companies to implement location or device-specific access control policies, to prohibit any unpatched or vulnerable devices from connecting to corporate services.

It also provides added security for corporate systems by shielding publicly visible IP addresses, using an encrypted tunnel.

But even this encrypted traffic could be vulnerable.

Today, encrypted data traffic can be recorded and harvested, stored, to be cracked later when quantum computers are available to nation state funded projects and subsequently mainstream businesses. These are called ‘record and replay’ attacks.
Most classified data has a shelf life of around 15 years.
Some experts are predicting that quantum computers are only about five years away.
You can see the problem.

The sheer level of processing power that quantum computers will possess is mind boggling.
Let’s put some context on this.
The internet runs on RSA2048 public key cryptography.
Encryption that would take 13.7 billion years to break using a conventional computer today.
Using a Quantum computer, researchers have calculated this would take just 42 minutes to crack.
Fundamentally, everything from web browsing, email, financial transactions, online shopping, and even cryptocurrency could be put at risk.

Quantum computing will be revolutionary but very disruptive, and organisations should be acting now, putting provisions in place to mitigate the exposure they have to bad actors decrypting their secure communications with quantum computers.

For more information

You can hear our CEO, Alan Platt, discuss these trends and much more in the recent webinar (Oct 2022) with the London Stock Exchange Group webinar: Cyber Security – what you need to know to protect your business

The team at CyberHive are at the forefront of post-quantum cryptography and have developed solutions across several business and industrial applications.

Contact our experts on [email protected] to learn more about how to transition from legacy encryption algorithms to quantum-secure standards.