The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way businesses operate, and many have switched to remote working in order to comply with lockdowns and restrictions. This in turn became an opportunity for hackers to widen their range of attack, and to increase their success rate and positive outcomes from their activities.
When it comes to listing and discussing the main threats faced from any cyber-attack, almost every Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) can agree that phishing, ransomware and denial of service are among the top threats. However, as technology evolves, so to do the threats from cyber-attacks. And if we search deep enough, we could foresee possible future threats, which can be summarized into two main areas: threats to trust, and quantum security.
Trust Threatened
Technology is evolving, and with that evolution comes the possibility for positive outcomes, including solving major crises such as the energy crisis, world hunger, protecting the environment, curing disease, etc. However, to enable technology to benefit society, trust needs to be present. People and companies need to trust technology in order to invest in it, so that it can evolve properly. This has been difficult lately, with an increasing number of cyber-attacks worldwide, which can make investors or CEOs think twice before making any decisions related to technology. For example, the Capital One data breach discovered in 2017 caused several companies to re-evaluate and delay their decision to move to ‘the cloud’, as they found it not secure enough after the data breach took place.
Quantum Security
As for quantum security, the source of worry regarding this threat comes from the prediction that quantum technology will be available in the near future, making it much easier to decrypt a company’s data.
Currently, any information encrypted using a regular computer with bits, zeroes and ones, will take thousands of years to decrypt using the same regular computers. However, when quantum technology becomes available, quantum computers will be using qubits to perform certain complex forms of calculation far more quickly than could ever be possible using classical computational algorithms. This means that cybercriminals will have the ability to decrypt all encrypted data, and research shows that threat actors are collecting encrypted data today, waiting for the quantum technology to be available.
One might ask – why not encrypt all data using quantum technology once it becomes available? Well, that is a possibility, but only if we move quickly enough to adapt with these changes and developments. Up until now, guidelines for governments on how to prepare themselves and how to act when the time comes to protect all their data with quantum-proof security are not even due to be published until 2024.
That’s why being prepared for such events is essential in order to prevent future threats from impacting your organization and causing great damage. When plans are already in place, and staff are trained on how to handle such future scenarios, the effect of these cyber-attacks will be much more contained.
Contact Agilient to discuss how you can ensure your organization is secure.
Author: Mahdi Kobeissi, Cyber Security Consultant