IT Predictions for 2021
You can’t argue that 2020 has been an active and busy year for the cyber community. If we are to cast ourselves back to this time last year, with IT and cybersecurity leaders casting their predictions for 2020, it is unlikely that anyone could have foreseen the events that ran their course in the digital world as a result of an internationally declared pandemic.
From Zoom-bombing to sophisticated phishing attacks leveraging the ongoing health crisis, the only thing it’s safe to say is 2020 has exposed many basic vulnerabilities in IT systems and processes, and has also forced the majority of us into a wider world of cybersecurity when it comes to working from home.
In 2020 there has been, on average, a cyberattack somewhere on the web every 39 seconds; researchers have pooled together new predictions for 2021 that this number will increase to once every 11 seconds. Off the back of this, cybercrime is set to become the world’s largest economy (behind China and the U.S) at an estimated worth of $6 trillion. This number is only predicted to rise as we look beyond 2021; Cybersecurity Ventures have estimated that global cybercrime costs will amount by 15% year-on-year over the next 5 years, reaching $10.5 trillion by 2025. To put these figures into the context of the rate at which we have been adopting and increasing reliance on technological functions in both our business and everyday lives, the cybercrime costs of 2015 were $3 trillion, meaning they have more than doubled over the last half decade.
What’s next to come for businesses?
A recent Forbes article has predicted that, in light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, changes enforced for 2021 will mean there will continue to be an increase in the amount of employees working remotely. To come hand in hand with this will be greater demands on the healthcare and pharmaceuticals industries, with added pressures on supply chains and innovation as the world fights to prevent the spread and mutation of the COVID-19 strain. On a business level, it is predicted that budgets for any travel, events or networking will be shifted to IT spend, increasing the availability for secure, safe working, remote devices and cybersecurity insurance in the wake of ransomware attack or data breach.
IT publisher Securelist have recently detailed a few of their own foresights regarding ransomware, expecting to see a greater increase in sophisticated ransomware. Throughout 2020 the unexpected appearance of ‘brokers’, those who offer to negotiate with online hackers to reduce the cost of ransom fees, has arisen, and will likely stay remain growing feature in 2021.
Securelist have highlighted that there will be a further change of attacker focus on mobile attacks. Year on year, APT actors have advanced tools in their attempts to target mobile devices which present, due to widespread remote working practice on personal devices, a great risk to company IP, data and network access.
Who’s most at risk?
The short answer – everyone, particularly within the manufacturing, medicine and government space; it’s also been widely speculated that the industry most likely to suffer from the cyber world will be retail. Global research and consultancy firm Forrester have identified that retail and manufacturing will be subject to more breaches due to the ‘direct-to-consumer shift’ – in other words, brands who once went to market via retailers and distributor supply chains will now face disruption that causes them to go direct to their customers. This is a shift we have already seen the evidence of; recent reports from Bugcrowd have found that the COVID-19 pandemic elevated the expectations of digital capabilities of companies consumers are buying from by 68%. Alongside this statistic, it was found by First Data that only a disappointing (and worrying) 11% of consumers are confident about retailers’ abilities to respond to everchanging and sophisticated threat from the cyber world.
Serbus is an industry leader for secure communications and remote device security, providing solutions to the likes of the MoD, UK Government and world class brands alike. If you are interested to learn more about how we can help protect your business devices against external threat, keeping your company IP and customer data at the highest level of security, contact us for a chat. Email us on [email protected] or call our office +44 (0)1432 870 879.