2021 was a devastating year in cybersecurity. With the rise of digital technology, and individuals living their lives online, threat actors were prepared to profit from the transitional period, and systematically attack everything from critical infrastructure for health to medium and small-sized enterprises.

In the fourth quarter of 2021, there were more disclosed data breaches that exceeded all of the numbers for 2020. These figures were significant in their ways. In total, 281.5 million people have suffered the effects of breaches of their data in 2021. Cybercrime can cost businesses $1.79 million every minute showing the wide-ranging impacts of today’s cyber-security security landscape.

As a result, more than half of CIOs consider cybersecurity to be an operational priority, as of now and for the coming year. A lot of leaders are committing large amounts of money to this issue. A study revealed that over 25% of CEOs expect to boost their cybersecurity budgets by two by 2022 to deal with the ever-increasing threat of theft.

In the context of businesses looking to boost growth following a year of pandemics choosing the best way to allocate resources is crucial to safeguarding the digital infrastructure and maximizing ROI. To help make those decision-making Here are three must-know cybersecurity trends to watch for in 2022.

• People Are Often The Problem

Ransomware and phishing scams are the most well-known tactics used by today’s threat actors. These threats allow attackers to carry out their activities with a degree of impunity and offer substantial financial rewards. Both ransomware and phishing attacks grew in size and frequency, as well as cost, in 2021. Businesses can expect this trend to continue through 2022 too.

But how businesses react to the threat can be the difference. Before you invest in the most recent cybersecurity software take into account the human factor that plays a major role in 85 per cent of cybersecurity-related incidents.

If employees click on a suspicious email, fail to upgrade their computers, don’t follow the highest standards of digital hygiene, or in malicious ways attack IT integrity and security, they put cybersecurity and data security at risk.

Simple employee education can make a difference. One investigation (paywall) discovered that regular employee training increases their ability to recognize fraudulent attempts to phish. Additionally encouraging employees to adopt the best practices for digital hygiene such as regularly updating their passwords on their accounts, could help thwart security threats. In conjunction with employee-related oversight programs businesses can tackle the biggest cybersecurity risk — the people.

• Money Is The Motivation

Cybercrime pays. The threat actors are often able to operate in relative anonymity, disobeying the law and regulations by leveraging the internet’s power to commit cybercrimes from any place within the planet. While this is true for threat actors — like the increasingly problematic and prevalent ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operations (paywall) — it also applies to insider threats who have access to highly valuable company and customer data.

For instance, a Russian citizen had been offered one million dollars to download malware onto the network of his company. Furthermore, a U.S. scientist attempted to obtain information worth one billion dollars from trade. Although he was sentenced to two years of prison time instead of payment it demonstrates the financial motive which ensures that cybercrimes will continue to increase in the coming year.

If money is the primary motivation businesses will have to strengthen their defenses to safeguard their most important assets.

• Costs Will Continue To Increase

In 2021, the median cost of a data breach surpassed $4 million at the beginning of the year, driven by the increased likelihood and difficulty in stopping breaches due to hybrid and remote teams. Security breaches involving remote workers cost an average of $1.07 million more than those occurring on-site.

Simultaneously, the cost of ransomware attacks is skyrocketing. In 2018, the average ransomware payout was just $700, but over the following two years, it surged to over $200,000—an astonishing increase in a short period. Notable victims have been paying multi-million-dollar ransoms, suggesting no imminent drop in this trend. Additionally, regulatory fines, opportunity costs, and customer loyalty all contribute to making security failures more costly.

Business leaders must recognize that the cost of cybersecurity breaches will continue to escalate. It is now more crucial than ever to prioritize the security of digital infrastructure and sensitive data.

• Staying Ahead Of The Trends

When companies look back on their past year and prepare for the year 2022, the changing cybersecurity landscape will be the top priority. While determining the priorities and allocating resources are fantastic outcomes of those discussions, they’re most effective when responding to the most recent trends and threats.

That is the same way that threat actors always look for new attack strategies and vulnerabilities Companies shouldn’t sit on their accomplishments. Instead, cybersecurity should remain a constant element of any viable and profitable business. Get in touch with AVIANET to know how you can change the company’s digital infrastructure.