What are the top five cybersecurity trends of 2023? KnowBe4, a security awareness training and simulated phishing platform provider, has announced its predictions.
The Top 5 Cybersecurity Trends for 2023
In a prepared statement, KnowBe4 lists its top five trends (in no particular order) as:
- A shift in focus to creating a security culture within organizations across the globe
The need for security awareness training is now clear to most organizations. They are starting to evolve from just training to additional emphasis on behavior and culture. There has been a positive momentum toward building a strong security culture globally. This involves support from executives and the employee base as a whole.
- A new social engineering battleground purported by an increase in social media scams
Social media scams will blossom, putting friends, family, organizations and colleagues at risk. With the ever-growing industry of social media commerce and marketplaces, people will be relying even more on indicators of trust. These indicators include how many connections an account has and how long the account has been active, making them susceptible to scams that use stolen social media accounts to trick individuals and organizations. With official verification now for sale for a small fee on various platforms, scammers are sure to take advantage.
- A rise in catastrophic attacks on critical infrastructure
It is also likely that a major outage will occur due to critical infrastructure being compromised, especially given the ongoing war in Ukraine with Russia. This could have the potential to have societal and economic impacts for a large number of people or even an entire nation. With a global recession and rising cost of living, we may also see digital civil disobedience occurring in the form of people attacking their own government sites or national infrastructure as a form of protest.
- Dangerous deepfake attacks will become more convincing and damage reputations
Deepfakes are a dangerous tool used to build a level of trust, convincing unsuspecting people to accept the words and actions of someone at face value. Organizations do not have a deep level of understanding about the dangers this can present regarding reputation. Thus, they do not yet train their employees enough on the topic.
- Larger attack surface introduces new threats with the Metaverse
There is an increasing number of threat vectors that are creating a larger attack surface, making it more difficult to adequately protect organizations worldwide. With the proliferation of the Metaverse, there are more opportunities for cybercriminals to perpetrate attacks.
What Are The Implications for 2023?
KnowBe4 CEO Stu Sjouwerman said that the list of predictions in cybersecurity trends was gathered from its global group of experts who have decades of experience in the cybersecurity field.
Commenting on the trends, Sjouwerman said:
"They are at the forefront of what is happening in the industry, constantly following trends and staying up to date on the latest threats, tools and techniques. Many of them noted a fundamental shift in focus for organizations beyond security awareness training alone to striving for a strong security culture that is driven by measurable behavioral change. Also, social engineering will continue to dominate as an overwhelmingly successful method for cybercriminals to execute attacks."
