Predicted trends include a focus on creating a security culture, a new social engineering battleground via social media scams, catastrophic attacks on critical infrastructure, deepfakes damaging reputations as well as a larger attack surface
KnowBe4, the provider of the world’s largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, today announced its 2023 cybersecurity predictions from its team of industry experts.
The top five predicted cybersecurity trends for 2023 include:
- A shift in focus to creating a security culture within organizations across the globe
The need for security awareness training is now clear to most organizations and they are starting to evolve from just training to additional emphasis on behavior and culture. There has been a positive momentum toward building a strong security culture globally that involves support from executives and the employee base as a whole.
- A new social engineering battleground purported by an increase in social media scams
Social media scams will blossom, putting friends, family, organizations and colleagues at risk. With the ever-growing industry of social media commerce and marketplaces, people will be relying even more on indicators of trust, such as how many connections an account has and how long the account has been active, making them susceptible to scams that use stolen social media accounts to trick individuals and organizations. Also, with official verification now for sale for a small fee on various platforms, scammers are sure to take advantage. - A rise in catastrophic attacks on critical infrastructure
It is also likely that a major outage will occur due to critical infrastructure being compromised, especially given the ongoing war in the Ukraine with Russia. This could have the potential to have societal and economic impacts for a large number of people or even an entire nation. With a global recession and rising cost of living, we may also see digital civil disobedience occurring in the form of people attacking their own government sites or national infrastructure as a form of protest. - Dangerous deepfake attacks will become more convincing and damage reputations
Deepfakes are a dangerous tool used to build a level of trust, convincing unsuspecting people to accept the words and actions of someone at face value. Organizations do not have a deep level of understanding about the dangers this can present regarding reputation and thus do not yet train their employees enough on the topic.
- Larger attack surface introduces new threats with the Metaverse
There is an increasing number of threat vectors that are subsequently creating a larger attack surface, making it more difficult to adequately protect organizations worldwide. With the proliferation of the Metaverse, there are more opportunities for cybercriminals to perpetrate attacks.
"This list of predictions in cybersecurity trends has been gathered from our global group of experts who have decades of experience in the cybersecurity field,” said Stu Sjouwerman, CEO, KnowBe4. “They are at the forefront of what is happening in the industry, constantly following trends and staying up to date on the latest threats, tools and techniques. Many of them noted a fundamental shift in focus for organizations beyond security awareness training alone to striving for a strong security culture that is driven by measurable behavioral change. Also, social engineering will continue to dominate as an overwhelmingly successful method for cybercriminals to execute attacks.”
For more information on KnowBe4’s team of experts, visit https://www.knowbe4.com/security-awareness-training-advocates.
About KnowBe4
KnowBe4, the provider of the world’s largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, is used by more than 54,000 organizations around the globe. Founded by IT and data security specialist, Stu Sjouwerman, KnowBe4 helps organizations address the human element of security by raising awareness about ransomware, CEO fraud, and other social engineering tactics through a new-school approach to awareness training on security. Kevin Mitnick, an internationally recognized cybersecurity specialist and KnowBe4's Chief Hacking Officer, helped design the KnowBe4 training based on his well-documented social engineering tactics. Tens of thousands of organizations rely on KnowBe4 to mobilize their end users as their last line of defense.
