The year 2020 has become the doorway of opportunities for cybercriminals to commit computer crimes and this is not different from 2022 onwards. In just a matter of weeks since the pandemic hit, businesses, the world economy, education systems, and so on changed beyond expectation. But what are the top cybersecurity threats in 2022?
Cyber Security 2022
Cybercriminals are having the best time of their lives due to the major shift of doing everything online allowing them to do their dirty works of taking advantage of people by hiding at the back of their computers.
As hackers become more and more efficient and effective in doing their jobs, cybersecurity threats are also emerging and have become a huge problem for every business in today’s society. Hacking, nowadays, is no longer a hobby, but a business that will make them instantly rich when done excellently.
While the world is adjusting with the new normal, our technologies are advancing too resulting in increasing and evolving cyber threats. The COVID-19 pandemic has also created some of the best cybersecurity threats of the year, resulting in a shift to cloud environments.
Constantly Changing Digital Landscape
There is no 100% guarantee of protecting one’s system against cyber-attacks because as more companies are creating and updating their existing security strategies, IT professionals need to step up their game because these modern threats are getting harder to detect and stop. The security skills required to resolve threats are more than just understanding how to implement tools or configure encryptions, but require more diverse and vast knowledge regarding a wide variety of technology configurations, and environments.
For these skills alone, organizations must look for a high-level expert and allocate some of their resources to training them. This year 2022, companies need to prepare themselves and study these changes to come up with an appropriate cybersecurity plan for their businesses to overcome problems that will arise in the future. To give us a glimpse of the cybersecurity threats we need to be mindful of and an idea as to how are we going to respond in this kind of situation, here is the list of the most common to severe threats that will make our heads hurt this 2022.
Pandemic-Related Phishing
The so-called Pandemic-Related Phishing was coined because hackers used this crisis as an entry point to destroy personal lives and professional business employing scheming or spreading fake COVID-19 related inspection spams and emails to hype the fears of the public and use it to their advantage. There are still a lot of phishing campaigns about the pandemic that is circulating all over the web to this day so companies better watch it out.
Risks Associated with User devices
Simply the risk from employees who work remotely and use devices that are not owned, patched, managed, or secured by the IT team of the company that allows cybercriminals to get into the network and bypass perimeter security. As a result, sensitive company data is compromised.
Cloud Breaches
As more companies, big and small, shift to cloud services to support remote working there is an emergence of what is called Cloud Breaches. Cloud-based means the availability of computer system resources even without direct active management of the user. There is a common data center that can accommodate a large number of users distributed over multiple locations and all data is stored or kept in one central server. If it will not be properly secured, there will be cloud misconfigurations, data breaches, and stealing of data that could happen that will result in millions of dollars of losses.
Supply Chain Attacks
Browsing on the list of severe cybersecurity threats cases, the first on the list is known as Supply Chain Attacks. The impact of this breach is very serious that it is impossible not to pay attention because the risk is high enough to be ignored. Supply Chain attacks allow hackers to steal data, install ransomware, or use the system itself to attack others. If not resolved, it will result in multiple data breaches, financial and reputational damage, and a huge liability for the hack organization.
Multifactor Authentication (MFA) bypass
This is very useful for hackers as most companies do not have protection against it yet. Here, hackers focused on password-based attacks that enable them to easily purchase credentials for online banking transactions using their stolen passwords. Even if companies apply countermeasures such as putting code-generated passwords, cybercriminals are always one step ahead and continually honing their bypass strategies allowing them to still break into different accounts so easily. There are many forms of MFA bypass techniques that are quite familiar to us such as:
- Social Engineering,
- Consent phishing,
- Trusted device attacks, and
- Sim Swapping aka Sim Jacking
To discuss each bullet point a little further, we can go over them one by one:
Social Engineering
This tactic is used to trick users to give out their MFA codes over the phone or through the web. It can be in a form of a phone call asking the victim to read the code that was sent on their phone or it could be in a form of an email with a link to a phishing site that looks like a real site. It already happens to a dozen of celebrities on Twitter when their accounts were hacked because a Twitter employee got tricked into giving out credentials allowing the hackers to access the internal server of Twitter which results in piled-up lawsuits against Twitter.
Consent phishing
This is designed to trick users into giving a malicious app permission to make changes to their computer.
Trusted device attacks
Same in a manner that it will make the server click the Trust this device check box to proceed to the website they want to visit most commonly on banking websites.
Sim swapping or SIM jacking
This allows the criminals to steal PINS as they are texted through your phone and use them to break into your bank accounts. They use your phone number as two-factor authentication to all your accounts.
Make sure you’re Protected
We can go on and on and name all the cybersecurity threats out there and the list is endless. The purpose of knowing these risks is to save ourselves from future financial losses that our company or us, personally, may suffer. It can make us go bankrupt and we do not want to have multiple regrets in the future. With all these cybersecurity threats emerging, we need to make sure that we will be protected in this type of critical situation and avoid the probability of paying costly claims may they be personal or business-related. What we need is to get insurance that provides additional protection and will give us peace of mind to the unexpected. Worry less because a company like AIS can give you the best option and the common insurance coverages that might interest you to help you protect your companies from these cybersecurity threats.
Cyber Liability Coverage
AIS has Cyber Liability Insurance that helps you respond to a data breach and other cyber events to cover financial losses. Their cyber policy covers both first-party and third-party coverages.
First-party coverages will pay expenses your business directly suffer as a result of the breach such as the expenses of informing your customers about a hacker attack.
Meanwhile, third-party coverages are for claims against your business by other parties or companies that have been affected as a result of your actions or your failure to solve the issue.
How does Cyber Liability Insurance Work?
Cyber Liability Insurance incorporates first-gathering and outsider inclusions and perhaps hazard moderation administrations to help you stop a breach before it occurs This protection is adaptable and adjustable to the degree of insurance you need. They prescribe digital risk protection to any organization that utilizes PCs to send, get or store electronic information. Data is your most significant resource, and you don’t need it bargained.
A good cyber liability policy ought to incorporate business interference protection. This is a significant sort of protection to have, as numerous organizations are highly dependent on the technology-based system.
Before, if your data is breached, you may have to close down activities until things are fixed, but not anymore. Instead of losing cash, this policy recovers your misfortunes and helps you recoup your losses. Also, this insurance policy covers things like examinations, lawful expenses, character observing, personality rebuilding administrations, administrative fines, and lawful settlements so companies do not have to worry about how to budget funding when unpredictable data breaches occur.
Expert Guidance
Before you apply for online security protection, you need to guarantee that you are doing and giving all that you can to restrict your exposure to danger. The FBI gives superb guidance on what you should think about shielding yourself from basic cybercrimes.
We’ve learned that Cyber Liability Insurance is important coverage that will help us minimize cybersecurity threats. We must not allow one data breach to destroy the financial health of our entire organization. As innovation turns out to be progressively significant for organizations, the requirement for Cyber Liability Insurance is a priority.
We’re here to help!
To become familiar with how much this policy will cost your business, contact us via email or book an appointment with us today. We are an insurance agency in Denver, Colorado and we provide cyber liability coverage. With our autonomous protection specialists and mindful help, we can discover an answer that meets your requirements and spending plan.