The Cybersecurity Risks of 2021

Every year, cybercriminals grow more advanced. In 2020, those criminals had a vast number of opportunities to take advantage of in a year of such turbulent business disruption. Knowing what to expect from cybercrime in 2021 is going to be critical if organizations want to keep themselves and their teams safer online. By looking at the most recent trends in cybercrime and how they are expected to evolve in 2021, those organizations will be able to use staff training and improved technologies to ensure that hackers fail to break into their IT architecture. If you want to keep your business safer in 2021, here are the cybersecurity risks that you need to be aware of.

The Challenge of Remote Workers

A decentralized workforce is good news for cybercriminals. That’s because the home office rarely has secure IT networks on the scale of a more centralized workspace. That means hackers can more easily breach systems and gain access to the business infrastructure that would otherwise be impossible with the centralized model. New ways of approaching security are going to be vital, with options like Know Your Customer (KYC) biometric authentication proving to be one of the most effective ways to keep your IT safer in 2021.

A Cyber Attack Death

It is widely predicted that 2021 will see deaths caused explicitly by cyberattacks. That’s because hospitals have become a major target for high tech criminals, and the pressure that those facilities are under is only compounding the problem. Some countries are already reporting instances of death by cyberattack. In Germany, an online attack led to a system breakdown in a hospital, which resulted in the death of a patient. If it goes to trial as a homicide, then it will be the world’s first example of a cyberattack being a means of murder.

The IoT and 5G

Despite delays, 5G is going to be rolling out extensively in 2021, and while that’s great news for technology, it also means more security risks. The internet of Things (IoT), which links multiple devices for easier systems management, is notoriously bad at staying secure, and the more devices that are added to a network, the more risk of a security gap. From wearable devices to remote monitoring systems and even IoT connected smart products, unsecured devices are going to need to focus more on security than convenience.

Business Email Attacks

Emails remain one of the hacker’s preferred methods of attack, and most people have fallen foul of a suspicious email or link. In 2021, Business Email Compromise (BEC) is going to grow more common to see. That’s because a BEC attack takes advantage of the fact that we rely on emails to communicate in business, and links are more likely to be clicked on if they seem to be from a trusted contact or a potential customer. This is going to mean greater levels of staff training so that spotting this type of popular attack is made much easier.

Nobody is immune from being targeted by cybercriminals, and large and small businesses alike need to ensure that they have robust security protocols in place at all times. As the workplace changes and technology evolves, cybercriminals remain one of the biggest risks for a business of every size and in every sector.

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