Cybersecurity issues and challenges will continue to provide fodder next year for crisis-related situations for companies, organizations, and governments.
That’s according to the observations and predictions of cyber experts and observers.
Uptick in Disruptive Hacktivism
“Everyone should be prepared for global activity around the myriad major events being held throughout 2024, including the U.S., European Parliament and other elections, as well as the Summer Olympics in Paris,” according to Google Cloud’s Cybersecurity Forecast report for 2024,
“Additionally, as major global conflicts continue into next year, be prepared for an uptick in disruptive hacktivism. The cybersecurity landscape is constantly evolving, sometimes in new and unexpected ways. Defenders, often with limited resources, have the monumental task of keeping up,” the report warns.
Election Interference
With the widespread adoption of generative AI, “we are likely to see AI supercharging election interference in 2024,” Shivajee Samdarshi, chief product officer at Venafi, said via email.
“From the creation of convincing deepfakes to an increase of targeted misinformation, the concept of trust, identity and democracy itself will be under the microscope. This will put [an] even greater onus on individuals to scrutinize and make informed decisions and on media platforms to root out false content,” he predicted.
More Targeted Attacks
“The nature of cyberattacks is becoming more targeted, focusing on specific digital infrastructures of individual companies,” Nenad Zaric, CEO and cofounder of cybersecurity firm Trickest, said in an email message.
“This requires a bespoke approach to cybersecurity, moving from generic solutions to more tailored strategies that can address unique vulnerabilities and threats. In a world at war, malicious actors are increasingly targeting the critical infrastructure of companies and even countries.
“Such tasks are challenging and cannot be addressed with traditional approaches and using traditional products; instead, they require bespoke automation and strategies,” he counseled.
Fooling Users
“Hackers will likely use AI to analyze vast amounts of data and launch targeted attacks. AI-driven phishing attackers capable of generating highly convincing and personalized messages, which trick users into revealing sensitive information, may increase,” Stefan Schiller, a vulnerability researcher at Sonar, said via email.
“AI-powered malware could adapt and evolve in real-time, making it more challenging for traditional anti-malware detection systems to keep up,” he warned.
Leveraging AI Tools
Emerging threats “where monitoring for and detecting cyber threats will increasingly become a ‘fool’s errand’ where it will be impossible to distinguish between what good and bad looks like,” Peter M. Tran, the head of global cyber infrastructure and product security solutions at InferSight, said via email.
“This is a direct result of the commercial use of AI tools across most all major business operating functions to gain efficiencies while at the same time, cyber attackers are leveraging the same AI tools to generate attack techniques and tactics that can ‘deep fake’ current cybersecurity defenses,” he pointed out.
New Avenues For Cybercrime
“Cybersecurity is only going to become a more difficult field,” Rob Price, director of field security at Snow Software, said in an emailed message.
“AI has created new avenues for cybercrime, and proactive vigilance against attacks will become an increasingly important priority. This will be especially difficult [because] we are going to continue to see a lack of security personnel and manpower required to fulfill some of the functions of cybersecurity management… this shortage has the potential to grow,” Price concluded.
The above article appears at forbes.com, by Edward Segal, Senior Contributor at Forbes
