Check Point Software has announced its cyber security predictions for 2022, outlining the key challenges that organizations are likely to encounter in the coming year.
Supply chain attacks, according to the Check Point, will be more widespread, and governments will begin to enact regulations to address them and protect networks. They will also look into partnering with the private sector and other countries in order to identify and target more threat groups that are operating on a global and regional scale.
By 2022, there will be a significant increase in the number of large-scale data breaches. Organizations and governments may have to spend more money to recover from these breaches. In May 2021, a US insurance company paid a ransom of $40 million to hackers. This was a new high, and we can expect attackers’ ransom demands to increase in 2022.
Additional Predictions
Misinformation campaigns will resurface, ushering in a new era of “fake news 2.0.” Cyber criminals will continue to use these types of fake news campaigns to carry out phishing attacks and scams in 2022.
The cyber-cold war will get more intense: By using the improved infrastructure and technological capabilities, terrorist groups and political activists will try to push their agendas and carry out more sophisticated and widespread attacks. Cyber attacks will become more common and will be used as proxy conflicts to destabilise global activities.
Malware attacks on mobile devices will increase in 2022: As mobile wallets and mobile payment platforms become more widely used, cybercriminals will evolve and adapt their strategies to exploit the growing dependency on mobile devices.
Cryptocurrency is expected to become a focal point for cyber-attacks around the world: As reports of stolen crypto wallets caused by free airdropped NFTs have become more common, Check Point Research investigated OpenSea and proved that users’ crypto wallets can be stolen by using critical security. We can anticipate a rise in cryptocurrency-related attacks in 2022.
Microservices vulnerabilities will be exploited by attackers to launch large-scale attacks: As microservices become the most popular approach for developing applications, microservices architecture being embraced by cloud service providers (CSPs), attackers are launching attacks using vulnerabilities uncovered in microservices. CSPs will likewise be the target of large-scale attacks.
Deepfake technologies will be weaponized by the attackers: Deepfake social engineering attacks will be used by threat actors to gain permissions and access to sensitive data.
The number of penetration tools continues to rise: Penetration tools will be increasingly used by hackers to customize attacks in real time and to live and work within victim networks.