15 Cyber Security Trends Expected in 2024

More people working from home means new cyber security risks. The reason for this is simple: people. Human error is often the enabler of severe cyber security breaches. An employee working at home may be more likely to have a less-secure internet connection, leave their computer unattended or be fooled by an innocent-looking email from someone posing as a trusted colleague.

This is precisely why target ransomware and phishing attacks make up a large portion of the hacker’s arsenal. As these wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing cyberattacks increase in sophistication, look for companies to step up their efforts to train their remote workforce in good cyber hygiene practices in 2024.

Computing devices embedded in IoT products allow for sending and receiving data over the internet, posing significant security threats to users, and exposing them to cyberattacks. Smart appliances, such as voice assistants, like Google Home, fitness watches and even smart refrigerators are all IoT (Internet of Things) devices.

According to forecasts by Insider Intelligence, there will be 3.74 billion IoT mobile connections worldwide by 2025 and more than 64 billion IoT devices installed by 2026. As the recent growth of the IoT has created new opportunities for business and enabled quality of life improvements for consumers, the doors of opportunity for cybercriminals have also been flung wide open. 

The expanding role of machine learning (ML) in cyber security has become more proactive. With ML, cyber security is becoming simpler, more effective and less costly. ML develops patterns from a rich dataset and manipulates them with algorithms to anticipate and respond to cyberattacks in real time.

To produce effective algorithms, this technology relies heavily on rich and sophisticated data, which must come from everywhere and represent as many potential scenarios as possible. By implementing ML, cyber security systems can analyze threat patterns and learn the behaviors of cybercriminals. This helps to prevent similar attacks in the future and reduces the time cyber security professionals need to perform routine tasks. 

According to Statista, there were 6.5 billion smartphones in use in 2022. As consumers increase their usage of mobile devices for personal and business communication, shopping, banking and booking travel, these devices become an increasingly appealing avenue of opportunity for cybercriminals.

The apps we download on mobile devices can also put us at risk, and malicious developers have tricky ways to circumvent the safeguards of mobile app stores.

According to Cybernews, Apple prevented more than 1.6 million apps and updates from defrauding users in 2021, which in turn protected $1.5 billion in likely fraudulent transactions through its App Review process and Developer Code of Conduct. Look for more diligence from the tech giants as we head into 2024.

We all know that an unprotected password can allow cybercriminals to gain access to your bank account, credit cards or personal websites. This enables them to gain access to your money and your personal information and compromise your overall digital security.

MFA adds another layer of security to your personal accounts by adding another step — or two — to your logins. Remarkably easy for most people to set up, MFA blends at least two separate factors of authentication. The first is your username and password. The second could be a device, like your cell phone, where you would receive a verification code text, or it may be some kind of biometric verification like a fingerprint.

According to the identity and access management company Okta, more than 55% of enterprises use MFA to protect security and that number rises each year. In 2024 look for more consumers to adopt multi-factor authentication (MFA) as part of their cyber security behaviors to make it twice as hard for hackers to gain access to their accounts.

Traditional cybersecurity techniques like antivirus software, firewalls and anti-malware engines are no longer sufficient enough to protect against threats produced by machine learning-powered attacks. Artificial intelligence integration in cyber security is rapidly driving growth in this industry, from $8.8 billion in 2019 to a projected growth of $38.2 billion by 2026.

AI-powered cybersecurity is adept at handling large volumes of information over long periods of time. AI can quickly and efficiently analyze data from structured and unstructured resources and assist in rapid decisions about critical and remediate threats, reducing the time between detection and response.

As providers of threat intelligence reports, AI and machine learning can understand trends, patterns and flows and work to predict them, all while providing data visualization and cyber security forecasting for its users. AI is proving to be an important tool for organizations' cyber security, now and in the future.

Cyberespionage, also known as cyber spying or computer espionage, is a form of information gathering that involves using computers and the internet to gather intelligence from a target. Cyberespionage is used to steal personal or classified information to profit from it, especially from competitors to gain an edge in their market or nation-states that are interested in obtaining military or economic secrets.

There has been an alarming increase in cyber espionage attacks in the past few years, and cyber espionage has become a dangerous threat for larger organizations.

Malware is a type of sophisticated, malicious software designed by professional cybercriminals to infect networks, computer systems or devices in order to steal data, harm them or render them inoperative. Malware prevention involves various approaches to combat the ever-changing tactics that cybercriminals use. Here are some evolving malware protection methods that companies may consider implementing:

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks are malicious attempts to disrupt the regular traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the platform causing it to exhaust its resources and eventually crash. DDoS attackers often take advantage of malware that can turn personal computers into remotely controlled bots that work together as a "botnet."

DDoS attacks take advantage of a vulnerability in an organization's IT infrastructure by sending many network packets to a system and overloading its bandwidth, flooding the target with an overwhelming quantity of superfluous communication requests, thus preventing access to or use of a particular network resource. Various types of DDoS attacks include:

Ransomware is malware that restricts access to the computer system, encrypts its data and demands a ransom to remove the restriction. Ransomware protection is a must-have for businesses because it's nearly impossible to predict when or how you'll be targeted. However, ransomware protection software can help detect if your business has the potential to be attacked by ransomware, as well as detect and remove ransomware before any harm is done. The following are some additional ways companies can safeguard themselves from ransomware:

Cloud storage is a way for organizations to keep their data secure and accessible by letting a third-party public or private company handle their data storage. However, when relying so heavily on technology, it's important to make sure you've done everything in your power to protect that data from cyberattacks and other vulnerabilities.

According to Adam Gordon, a veteran CISO and CTO in the IT and cybersecurity industry, the top threats cloud storage services face include the misconfiguration of cloud storage that leads to:

Firewalls are important for any network, but they can be a financially demanding investment for both large corporations as well as small business owners. FWaaS is a more cost-effective alternative to hardware firewalls, which have become less necessary with the advent of modern antivirus and anti-malware programs.

Firewall as a Service (FWaaS) protects against threats by blocking them before they reach their target. This is done without compromising the computer's performance, which saves both time and money. It has many advantages, such as being cheaper, more flexible to business needs and not requiring any equipment.

Extended Detection and Response (XDR) is a vendor-specific software as a service (SaaS) threat detection and incident response tool that natively integrates multiple security products. This new cyber security strategy is often used with prevention, detection, response and recovery measures to counter new cyber threats. XDR models include a decrease in response times to quickly identify threats, an automated system for forensic analysis and timely duplication of data storage online for faster access if needed.

By bundling cyber security tools using a SaaS, XDR collects and correlates data about advanced threats and then analyzes, prioritizes, hunts down and remediates threats to prevent security breaches. XDR provides unified visibility across multiple attack vectors as it selectively targets and prevents breaches before they occur, decreasing the reaction time to threats.

Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM) are strategies used to manage both everyday and unique risks in supply chains based on continual risk assessment. These days, vendor risk management is often tied to data privacy as compliance regulations increase in response to higher volume and risks of data breaches at local, regional, federal and international levels.

Increasing the knowledge of accountability and visibility of compliance in the entire supply chain is the goal of SCRM. Management of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and Protected Health Information (PHI) by third parties is becoming a top priority for organizations, including inner compliance and "downstream" vendor compliance. Data privacy and SCRM is a timely trend in the cybersecurity private and public markets.

Secure access service edge or SASE (pronounced “sass-EE”) is a term coined by marketing analyst firm Gartner that represents, according to Cisco, any network architecture that combines VPN and SD-WAN capabilities with cloud-native security functions. SASE is a cloud-delivered service with the convergence of wide-area networking (WANs) and network security services.

SASE combines integrations like CASB, FWaaS and Zero Trust into a single, cloud-delivered service model for businesses to benefit from with a three-pronged goal: connecting, controlling and converging cybersecurity functions into one service platform.