The business environment has been significantly disrupted and transformed by COVID-19. Experts are now fully grasping its effects on organizations and their cybersecurity plans. The following will discuss the emerging threats that have resulted because of the pandemic and the trends that present the most risks in 2021 and the near future.

1) Remote Working

COVID-19 drove the rapid transition to remote working, which had significant effects on the cybersecurity realm. Due to the sudden onset of the pandemic, cloud migrations and solutions for working from home (WFH) were hastily implemented, and security was often neglected. As a result, vulnerabilities arose that left companies prone to cyberattacks. They will have to strengthen their defenses to address these new threats.

2) Ransomware Growing

Ransomware is now the biggest threat to a company’s data security, and this trend will continue beyond 2021. Businesses suffer from the loss of data and money, and the time and effort required to recover can be substantial. The financial losses from recent ransomware attacks averaged nearly $4.5 million. Many companies never recover and shut their doors within six months.

Once cybercriminals infiltrate a company’s IT network (typically via phishing), they infect computers and servers with malware, encrypt the stored data, and lockout employees. Next, the hackers threaten to release sensitive information if their ransom demands are not met. Facing mounting economic losses every minute and losing trust and goodwill, many victims decide to pay the ransom to regain access to their company data.

Organizations are turning to Zero-Trust Network Access (ZTNA) to prevent ransomware from infecting their systems. ZTNA is considered an effective solution for securing remote access to sensitive data and decreasing the probability of an attack. Experts predict that six out of 10 companies will transition from VPNs to ZTNA by 2023.

3) MFA Increasing

Implementing a strong password policy will significantly strengthen an organization’s cybersecurity. To make it even stronger, experts recommend adopting multi-factor authentication (MFA), which will help prevent malicious cyberattacks and data breaches.

MFA utilizes two or more separate factors for the authorization of users who want to access their company’s network and data. To confirm one’s identity, multifactor authentication requires a user to use another device for entering a one-time passcode.

Part 2 will discuss four more cybersecurity trends in 2021.

Alpha Business Support

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