Cybersecurity Trends 2021 Include Hackers Following Workers Home

Cybersecurity has taken on yet a new dimension since the pandemic.

Workers went home and the cyber-attacks followed. A flurry of new threats, technologies and business models have emerged in the cybersecurity space as the world shifted to a remote work model in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The lack of a network perimeter in this new world accelerated the adoption of SASE (secure access service edge), zero trust and XDR (extended detection and response) to ensure remote users and their data are protected.

Still, cyber criminals have taken advantage of the complexity introduced by newly remote workforces to falsely impersonate legitimate users through credential theft and have upped the ante by targeting customers in the victim’s supply chain.

The ability to monetize ransomware attacks by threatening to publicly leak victim data has made it more lucrative, while employers continue to fend off insiders with an agenda.

The Special Purpose Acquisition Corp (SPAC) craze has made its way into cybersecurity for the first time in 2021, with three vendors agreeing to merge or be acquired by SPACs while a well-known security venture fund stood up its own SPAC.

And more cybersecurity startups have notched unicorn valuations of at least $1 billion in the first four months of 2021 than in all of 2019 and 2020 combined.

Another developing cybersecurity trend organizations need to watch for involves what’s being called slave security or slave cam.

Hackers are turning webcam users into slaves by recording their secret activity through their computer and blackmailing them in exchange for money in the form of cryptocurrency.

Malware induced on to the PC of the user records what is happening before the camera as long as the user uses the computing device. Once the victim does something odd before the cam, the video gets recorded and the video clip is passed on to the remote servers owned by hackers as soon as the affected devices get connected to the internet.

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