Cybersecurity Predictions & Emerging Trends for 2024 – Part One

New developments in AI, ransomware, services, and other areas of cybersecurity are coming. Your organization has to stay informed and prepare for new technology capabilities and threats to your business.

Our panel of Sayers engineering experts in a recent internal session had a lot to say about what’s coming in 2024. We’ve summarized their cybersecurity predictions for you in this two-part series. 

1. Organizations Will Choose Their Cloud Provider Based Largely On The Cloud Platform’s Security Capabilities.

Given the growth in cloud combined with the current threat landscape, more organizations will base their cloud selection on the security capabilities of the cloud service provider. 

Organizations will need to better understand what it takes to secure cloud platforms including the top three: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. 

“Knowing what security capabilities the platform is bringing, and the ability to add to those capabilities will be a big driver in which cloud platform an organization ends up selecting. At some point, we will see a major cloud provider-level security breach. This may cause a reevaluation of which cloud you are in and the importance of a cloud provider’s ability to secure those environments.”

Ken Wisniewski, Senior Security Architect at Sayers

2. AI And Large Language Models Will Make Social Engineering, Email Phishing, And Deep Fakes More Prevalent And Powerful.

In 2023, bad actors tried a combination of old and new techniques to infiltrate organizations and create havoc. The MGM Resorts hack that shut down systems for 10 days at several of the corporation’s hotels and casinos started with a simple phone call using social engineering as an initial entry point.

Companies face new and more creative attack techniques including WormGPT, an AI-enabled private chatbot used by cybercriminals to write malicious software and phishing emails.

Due to the advancements in large language models (LLMs), these emails are more sophisticated and persuasive than many attackers could write themselves. The technique can believably impersonate a specific individual or organization based on historical email information from a compromised account.

In 2024, more organizations will:

• Overhaul their email security stacks and use a more layered defense approach to be more effective against the latest hacker techniques
• Perform more frequent stress tests for their email security solutions
• Require more security awareness training for employees and contractors to protect the organization from social engineering techniques, phishing, and deep fakes.

“We’re just beginning to see the impacts of AI and LLMs playing into the cyber landscape. Phishing and social engineering attacks are only going to get better, more refined, and more accurate. The end user is the last line of defense, so organizations have to do everything possible to enable that individual to make the smartest choice they can.”

Joe Schnell, Senior Cybersecurity Architect at Sayers

3. Concerns About Cyber-Physical System Security Will Increase, Especially In Healthcare And Utility Industries.

Security considerations span both the cyber and physical worlds. The growth of cyber-physical systems (CPS) has exploded with the Internet of X-things ranging from biomedical devices to automation systems that control your house or the building where you work. 

All of those CPS devices expand the attack surface, especially for two industries that stand out in terms of their changing security landscape: healthcare and electric utilities. 

In healthcare, patients and staff need to know who is controlling CPS devices connected to the internet including pacemakers, IV pumps, patient monitors, and robotic surgery systems. Healthcare providers must consider all the ways those could be exploited. 

In the utility industry, electric vehicles charging at the same time can put a strain on the electric grid and open up opportunities for attack. The huge amount of technology in self-driving vehicles has changed the landscape of what cyber-physical looks like. 

“The development of cyber-physical system devices has taken a security-last approach because these devices have to get on the market so quickly. Anything from your smart speaker to autonomous vehicles are competing in an arena where they have to get their latest wares out faster than their competition.”

Gerry Wollam, Senior Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at Sayers

4. Organizations Must Deal With The Double-Edged Sword AI Creates For Data Security.

Artificial intelligence capabilities will enable organizations to start using their massive stores of data. Tools such as Microsoft Copilot, an all-in-one virtual assistant that uses AI to augment tasks and workflows, will enable workers to more easily make the most of their data and become more organized and productive. 

But at the same time, adversaries will use AI to access and use companies’ data for malicious intent. Organizations will turn to data security assessments and audits to be sure they’re ready to securely use tools such as Copilot while protecting their intellectual property.

“You will see more data protection offerings, but organizations still have to start by discovering and classifying all their data before they can protect it. That includes identifying access permissions for that data, as identity has come into play in data protection.” 

Chris Willis, VP of Cybersecurity and Network Engineering at Sayers

5. Cyber Risk Quantification (CRQ) Will Be Both Possible And Accurate.

Quantifying and putting a financial number to an organization’s cybersecurity risk has been difficult. But that’s the type of tough questions board-level leaders ask. 

Now with AI and so much more data available, you can more accurately predict your organization’s cyber risk. New tools such as Safe Security, Axio, and Zscaler Risk360 can use API connections to integrate with your other cybersecurity solutions and collect valuable information while also leveraging the likelihood and cost of a breach through integration with threat intelligence and prior breach data. 

“These tools can quantify an organization’s risk based on data it’s getting from your systems. We haven’t seen something like this be accurate in the past, but now we’re seeing systems capable and enterprise-ready to be implemented and trusted.” 

Chris Willis, VP of Cybersecurity and Network Engineering at Sayers

6. Discovery And Visibility Of Assets And Data Will Be Even More Essential.

You can’t protect what you don’t know about. More organizations will turn to a growing number of attack surface management tools such as Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management (CAASM) to understand the assets and data they have. 

Departments outside of IT will be able to use AI tools to write their own code, while traditional infrastructure will shift to more as-a-service offerings (more on services in Part Two of this series). These developments will lead to a proliferation of shadow IT, making visibility even more crucial.

“One of the first questions organizations are struggling to answer is what do they have out there and what do they need to secure, from the OT side to the IT side. Organizations don’t have as strong a grasp of that as they think they do. Having that ground-floor understanding of the assets and data you have is going to be pivotal in 2024.”

Jason Marocchi, Cybersecurity Engineer at Sayers

Coming soon: Cybersecurity Predictions And Emerging Trends For 2024 – Part Two

Questions? Contact us at Sayers today to discover extensive technology solutions and expertise to cover all areas of your business.