A Look Toward The 2023 Cyber Landscape

While it’s impossible to predict with certainty what the cyber landscape will look like throughout 2023 due to its constant evolution, there are certain trends for which businesses and cybersecurity providers can inevitably prepare.

Threat actors, like most criminals, are creatures of habit; if the tactic worked once—or there is an extensive track record of others succeeding with a certain tactic—it is sure to persist. Essentially, it's the Willie Sutton mindset of cyber heists:

Q: Willie, why do you rob banks?

Q: Threat actor, why do you breach companies and deploy ransomware?

A: Because that's where the data is.

So long as cybercriminals can access critical data (to them it would read valuable data) by gaining access to a digital network, that is precisely what they are going to do. Sure, the TTPs and tools will increase in sophistication, but the basics will remain the same. For example, social engineering and phishing will likely remain at the top of the list of preferred techniques to gain legitimate user credentials. Threat actors will then use them to illegitimately enter an otherwise secure network. The way of disguising malicious keylogging software or making the recipient feel the email is valid and actually from the CEO may grow in complexity, though the basic technique remains.

The complement to the continued growth of phishing and social engineering scams, about which we can do a lot, is increasing the education and training of employees on how to exercise best practices. This includes how to identify and report suspicious network activity, create proper passwords, and exercise email security. Users, not software applications, are the first-line defense against a cyberattack.

2023 will (or at least should be) the year of the SOC-as-a-Service. The current reality is that global conglomerates, small businesses, and every venture in between are increasingly susceptible to cyberattacks every day they operate. Most organizations do not have the staff, technology, or finances available to have all endpoints monitored 24/7 by a team of experienced, certified security engineers and analysts. If yours is one of these organizations, don’t try to force an in-house solution: find a partner who can help.

Our goal at SpearTip is to help businesses simplify their security stack and offset the challenges of building a robust, in-house cyber response team. Reports indicate there will be some 3.5 million vacancies in the cybersecurity profession by 2025. This is a solvable problem because when you partner with us, our team immediately goes to work for you around the clock.

As malware attacks continue to increase in frequency and impact, one additional certainty for the new year is that remediating a breach will carry a cost substantially higher than proactively securing your environment. Early indications predict

the average global cost of a data breach will exceed $5 million.

For U.S.-based businesses, this figure approaches $10 million. The value of partnering with a team of experts who fully manage your cybersecurity from a well-established SOC is a much better deal now and for the long term.

It's vitally important for businesses to stay ahead of the ever-changing cybersecurity threat landscape and the expanding regulatory environment designed to protect sensitive data. Furthermore, as we see an expansion of IoT adoption, we can expect threat actors to target and exploit the weaknesses within these devices to disrupt supply chains and generally wreak havoc for financial gain. Our team offers a solution.

As we move into the new year, take the time to proactively assess your business' cybersecurity posture, train employees to spot and avoid risks, understand the most common elements present on the threat landscape, and engage with partners who can defend your critical data on a 24/7/365 basis.

While the nuances of next year’s landscape are uncertain, there is one fact to be most sure of as we adventure into 2023: it will be as troublesome and unpredictable as 2022.

And as always…