In 2023, cyberthreats increased and diversified, resulting in increased security challenges for organizations around the globe. Meanwhile, AI greatly increased its presence in the realm of cybersecurity.
It’s time to look ahead and focus on the anticipated cybersecurity threats and trends in 2024. What can we expect from threat actors and security specialists in the upcoming year? Read on and find out!
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Cybersecurity Threats for 2024
1. AI creates new dangers
The rapid advancement of AI technology will enable attackers to improve their manipulation efforts. The latest generation of AI tools can be used to find weaknesses in systems and exploit them, allowing attackers to conduct attacks or large-scale phishing or disinformation campaigns. Organizations should stay on the watchout for increasingly convincing fraud schemes and weak spots in their systems.
2. Ransomware and extortion will remain major threats
The Google Cloud Cybersecurity Forecast 2024 predicts that ransomware and extortion operations will remain a plague in 2024’s global IT landscape. Ransomware growth stagnated in 2022 but spiked again in 2023. The profitability of these attacks means threat actors still have strong incentives to continue compromising networks and stealing sensitive data. Organizations should prioritize offline backups, incident response plans, and the human in the loop to limit the business disruption caused by ransomware.
3. Vulnerable cloud environments
Many tech followers expect threat actors to increasingly target hybrid cloud environments and multi-clouds in 2024. Their main goal? Exploiting misconfigurations and identity flaws to jump across cloud boundaries and escalate access. Therefore, securing cloud resources, safely and rigidly managing identities, and monitoring for suspicious internal activity is key if organizations want to get a tight grip on this specific security challenge.
4. Supply-chain compromises
Supply-chain compromises affecting software and dependencies are also expected to persist. Companies and projects are increasingly interesting targets for threat actors seeking to initiate compromises via widely used open-source packages. Rigorous vetting of third-party code and monitoring of package registries can help you reduce the risk of supply-chain compromises. Be proactive and check in advance the important dependencies before official alerts (CVE) are out in the field.
5. Nation-state attacks and hacktivism
Google also predicts that nation-states will continue to conduct cyber attacks to achieve geopolitical goals. The tech behemoth also expects a rise in hacktivism and other cyber activity related to major global conflicts and elections (elections will be held in 40 countries in 2024). Therefore, companies should raise their awareness levels to recognize and effectively deal with nation-state attacks and hacktivism.
Want to know more about the cybersecurity threats in 2024? Read this in our blog.
Cybersecurity Trends for 2024
Now let’s look into some cybersecurity trends that will play an important role in 2024 and are relevant when it comes to securing infrastructure, networks, devices and users against the aforementioned threats.
1. AI and machine learning in security operations
As a countermeasure against AI-enhanced cyber threats, AI and machine learning are also expected to play a more critical role in cybersecurity operations from 2024 onwards. AI’s ever-advancing data analysis capabilities are increasingly used for identifying and predicting cyber threats. ML algorithms keep evolving and are getting better and better at (autonomously) recognizing new threats and adequately responding to them.
Modern AI algorithms exceed human capacities in the field of threat data collection, threat detection and prevention. Many tech experts expect AI algorithms to provide real-time threat analysis, enabling faster and more accurate responses to cyber incidents. The attacker, no matter how good the AI is, has access to the black box only. With using the code and being white box, you will always have a huge advantage.
There are several use cases for AI in cybersecurity and dynamic software testing. Let’s list a couple of prime examples.
- Breach risk prediction. AI algorithms can predict the expected types of attacks and even identify the components most vulnerable to a breach.
- The automation of security operations. AI can automatically search networks and systems for vulnerabilities, making it easier to find possible points of entry for intruders. Security automation also allows you to cut back on manual labor.
- Knowledge consolidation. Machine learning algorithms can detect security breaches that retain information from decades-old data and effectively exploit the accumulated knowledge.
- Predictive analytics offer a lot of interesting functionalities. Prime examples are optimized testing, intelligent test execution, defect analysis, and holistic test maintenance.
- Intelligent test execution. AI has the ability to meticulously select the most suitable test suite in response to specific code changes, trimming down testing time and simultaneously strengthening the feedback loop.
2. The EU Cyber Resilience Act
The EU Cyber Resilience Act is expected to come into force in 2024. This piece of legislature aims to safeguard consumers and businesses buying or using software or other products with a digital component. The act seeks to provide a number of guarantees.
- Harmonized rules when bringing to market software or products with a digital component.
- A framework of cybersecurity requirements governing the planning, design, development and maintenance of such products. The act also lists obligations that must be met at every stage of the value chain.
- An obligation to provide duty of care for the entire lifecycle of such products.
Fuzz testing is essential for meeting the criteria of the EU Cyber Resilience Act. It allows you to detect and fix vulnerabilities in the early stages of software development and through the entire lifecycle of a software product.
3. Outsourcing to managed solutions
Many companies already rely on external providers for sophisticated and specialized cybersecurity solutions. The reason? It’s often very expensive to build and manage a good and multidisciplinary in-house security team. IT professionals are expensive and hard to get by.
We expect that a growing number of organizations are going to seek the help of managed services to build and optimize robust and high-quality security solutions. Outsourcing security to external specialists gives organizations full access to knowledgeable security experts and the latest security tools for a predictable and manageable price. Using a managed solution also allows companies to fill gaps in their own security teams and acquire round-the-clock monitoring.
4. Strong focus on mobile security
Cybersecurity vendors and providers are going to invest even more money, time and resources in mobile security in 2024. Key mobile security features include strong encryption protocols, the even more widespread use of MFA, and advanced session logging features. Mobile security is mainly about the APIs on the server side providing all the data to the mobile apps.
5. Security consolidation
Although security consolidation was already on last year’s list, many organizations still deploy multiple-point solutions from several vendors to secure their assets. 2024 will be the year in which security consolidation gains even more ground. More and more organizations are going to deploy security solutions created by one vendor because this option provides better integration options.
6. Shift-left and DevOps approaches become even more important
We can also see that a growing number of organizations is leaning towards “shift-left approaches”. This means that DevOps teams try to guarantee application security at the earliest stages in the development lifecycle. Developers are involved and responsible for a secure, reliable and robust offering in all stages of the development lifecycle. Although this is not a new trend, shift-left and DevOps are going to be more important than ever as risk is increasing and AI is making threat actors more effective.
7. Zero-trust models and the principle of least privilege remain important
The concepts of zero-trust security and the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP) have gained significant traction in 2022 and 2023. Under the zero-trust model, all devices, apps and users that request access are considered “untrusted” until proven otherwise. Zero trust and PoLP have gradually evolved from a niche approach to a fundamental aspect of cybersecurity strategy. Zero trust should and will remain top of mind in 2024.
8. NIS2 implementations are coming up
In October 2024, organizations must have implemented NIS2. NIS2 is a revised version of the existing NIS Directive on Security of Network and Information Systems. Where its predecessor was aimed at large organizations that are essential to society (such as power companies and water providers), NIS2 also applies to (smaller) companies that are part of the same value chains.
This means that third-party security risk management requires even closer attention than before. Because the new legislation asks considerably more of companies when it comes to data protection, IT infrastructures, and information sharing and also involves stricter monitoring by the EU, many organizations’ security policies will revolve heavily around the NIS2 implementation in 2024.
9. A more important role for blockchain technology in cybersecurity
According to Splashtop, a growing number of tech companies and security vendors are recognizing the security potential of blockchain technology. One of the top security characteristics of blockchain is its ability to stop the practice of data tampering. The design of this decentralized technology makes it impossible to alter data without the consensus of the network once this information is recorded on the blockchain.
This feature makes blockchain ideally suited for the protection of sensitive data and the creation of decentralized identity management systems. The expectation is that a growing number of organizations will discover the possibilities and benefits of blockchain-based security technology.
Fuzz testing
An important and increasingly popular trend in the testing and security landscape is fuzz testing. Fuzz testing is an automated software testing method that injects invalid, malformed, or unexpected inputs into a system to reveal software defects and vulnerabilities. According to Forrester, 65% of security decision-makers are adopting fuzz testing, while 16% plan to implement it.
Tech corporations like Microsoft and Google were early adopters of fuzzing technologies to test their own systems. Since launching in 2016, Google's OSS-Fuzz, a free fuzzing platform for critical open-source projects, has helped fix over 8,800 vulnerabilities and 28,000 bugs across 850 projects.
Learn more about fuzz testing and how it helps companies automate testing and harden software download a free factsheet.