The Six Biggest Cyber Threats of 2024

It’s time to take stock of the cyber threat landscape says Darren Thomson, who maps out the remediating tools and processes needed to address them

Sometimes, it feels like cyber criminals are having a field day, devising new hacking techniques, uncovering more vulnerabilities, and watching attack surfaces grow. Of course, security teams aren’t sitting idly by. They are investing in a burgeoning collection of tools to combat all manner of threats. As a result, they become overloaded with analytics and alerts. Unable to assimilate and correlate all this disparate data easily, security teams risk missing key remediation priorities and indicators of compromise.

Replacing these piecemeal tools with fewer (but more effective) solutions requires a regular review of IT systems, applications, processes, and activities to focus efforts on the greatest threats. Reflecting on 2024 so far, the danger zones can be divided into six key areas.

The Six Biggest Cyber Threats of 2024

1. AI power: The weaponisation of AI is already a serious concern, and the volume and ingenuity of attacks will increase. Key issues are AI’s ability to automate and scale tasks rapidly, such as identifying vulnerabilities, writing personalised phishing content, and circumventing threat detection systems. Algorithms can not only analyse large datasets to find weaknesses to evade security measures, but also react to defensive mechanisms in real-time. Further integration of AI in cyber attacks will make attacks more adaptive and relentless.
2. Cloud insecurities: Fall out from early, inexperienced cloud deployments remains an ongoing problem. Misconfigurations are common, where wrong settings leave sensitive data exposed or enable unauthorised access to services or user credentials. Hackers exploit these mistakes, typically stealing data or installing ransomware. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks continue to plague cloud infrastructures – even brief interruptions can disrupt critical services, leading to financial losses and reputational damage. The scalable nature, combined with complex security responsibilities split between provider and customer, makes it an appealing target for cyber criminals.
3. The IoT boom: The proliferation of devices for IoT, expected to reach 30 billion by 2027, makes it impossible to monitor and secure each one effectively. Significant numbers have inadequate security measures, lack robust encryption, have poor authentication, and don’t receive regular software updates. The IoT boom is providing bad actors with ample and expanding opportunities for malicious exploitation.
4. Social engineering: Despite all the warnings about sharing too much personal information on social media, people continue to publish detailed accounts of their lives, including work. Cyber criminals are adept at social engineering, using these helpful posts to gain the trust of employees to divulge further information, or to assist phishing attempts, obtain passwords, or answer security questions for resetting passwords.
5. Supplier ecosystems: Breaching one vendor to gain access to an entire supplier ecosystem has become an easy option for hackers. Instead of targeting corporates with the most robust security, cyber attackers go after those with weaker defences, such as small suppliers, then bridge into larger organisations through their trusted connections. With supply chains increasingly interdependent, the problem presents a significant and growing challenge.
6. Flexible working: Patterns of working have stayed very different from pre-pandemic times, with many employees working flexible hours and remotely. This has led to confusion over the use of personal and work devices, especially related to access controls and data storage, leaving sensitive data vulnerable. If not managed properly, VPNs can be weak points too. On top of this, lack of control over physical workspaces, serviced offices and use of WiFi hotspots, gives criminals another set of routes to probe.

While the list of security concerns is daunting, organisations can take steps to help rationalise their approach by establishing standard best practices for themselves and their third parties.  A clear definition of cybersecurity policies internally can be extended to contracts with IT service providers, suppliers, and partners, including clauses on data security, breach notification, and recovery.

Ensure these essential tools and processes are in place:

• Control access

To avoid credential theft, implement strong access controls with multi-factor authentication across all systems, cloud services, applications, and departments. Grant only the minimum permission level required for employees and third parties to perform their jobs.

• Patch promptly

Prioritise and patch vulnerabilities promptly. This significantly reduces the attack surface. It’s critical to identify those that pose the most risk to critical systems and fix them quickly. Failure to have an established vulnerability management programme is a serious indicator of risk.

• Beware of malware and phishing

Have regular training to help employees spot phishing attempts and encourage them to report suspicious activity. Ensure malware and anomaly detection tools are in place, along with back-ups to recover quickly from attacks.

• Back-up frequently

Downtime and ramifications from cyber attacks can be costly and long-term. Effective back-ups are vital to minimise data loss, enabling organisations to resume business operations in minutes or hours, rather than days or weeks.

• Test recovery plans

Recovery plans should be tested and updated regularly, ideally using external resources to identify any failings.

Making these fundamentals all-inclusive internally will help build stronger cyber defences. Even so, criminals will continue to manipulate both data and people to orchestrate attacks. However, if organisations, third parties, and employees, all played their part to improve security, then the entire ecosystem would become more resilient. And life for cyber criminals wouldn’t be quite so peachy.