Enterprises will be better prepared for cyber-attacks in 2022, Trend Micro

Trend Micro has predicted that global organisations will be more alert and better prepared for cyberattacks in 2022 due to a comprehensive, proactive, cloud-first approach to mitigating cyber risk. Cloud-native security will be a priority among enterprises, many of which have become cloud adopters after the pandemic hastened their digital transformation efforts. 

In its security predictions for 2022 report, the cybersecurity company highlighted that the introduction of new cryptocurrencies in 2022 will require security teams to stay on top of any cybercriminals attempting to infiltrate and abuse corporate resources for their cloud-computing capabilities. Made more vigilant by dealing with the record high number of zero-day exploits found in 2021, enterprises will be on high alert for potential patch gaps as more vulnerabilities are expected to be unearthed. 

Also read: Major cyberattacks and data breaches faced by India Inc in 2021

The security firm’s researchers have further predicted that threat actors in 2022 will focus ransomware attacks on cloud and data centre workloads and exposed services to take advantage of the large number of employees continuing to work from home. Vulnerabilities will be weaponised in record time and chained with privilege escalation bugs to drive successful campaigns, according to the report. 

“It’s been a tough couple of years for cybersecurity teams, disrupted by work-from-home mandates and challenged as corporate attack surfaces have exploded in size. However, as hybrid work emerges and more certainty returns day-to-day, security leaders will be able to plot a robust strategy to plug gaps and make the bad guys work much harder,” said Vijendra Katiyar, Country Manager, India & SAARC, Trend Micro.   

Moreover, IoT systems, global supply chains, cloud environments, and DevOps functions will be in the crosshairs. And more sophisticated commodity malware strains will be aimed at SMBs. This is where enterprises will need to ensure that their IT security teams are well-positioned to adapt and address this imminent surge in exploits. 

Also read: Indian firms faced more ransomware attacks than any other country in 2021, report

Trend Micro predicts that many organisations will be ready for the challenge as they build out and implement a strategy to proactively mitigate these emerging risks through strict application control policies, risk-based patching, high-alert focus on spotting security gaps, network monitoring for greater visibility into IoT environments, zero trust approach to secure supply chains and extended detection and response (XDR) to identify attacks across networks.