By: Babur Khan, Technical Marketing Engineer - Enterprise Security at A10 Networks
In the first quarter of 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic is still wreaking havoc around the globe. The coronavirus is continuously evolving and presenting new challenges.
In addition to the direct
effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, we also saw a sharp
rise in cybercriminal activity. From simple phishing attacks to
one of the largest
DDoS attacks ever recorded, we saw the cyber threat landscape evolve and
grow.
At the same time, we also saw a rapid growth in
the tech and cyber security industry. From the roll
out of 5G in many parts of the world to exponential growth in the SaaS
industry, we saw the pandemic put many positive changes into full gear as well.
We believe that these challenges, and the
changes that they brought about, will not stop. The effects of this pandemic on
the tech industry will be long lasting. Moreover, some of the challenges
introduced in 2020 will affect cybersecurity well into 2021, and even beyond. As
we move deeper into 2021, here are some of the cyber security trends that we
see:
Cybercrimes Will Experience a Surge
Last year was a busy year for both attackers
and hackers as well as cybersecurity personnel defending against the plethora
of attacks to which they were subjected. With an election year in the United
States in 2020, we saw a rise in anti-government
cyber activities, a prominent example of which was the attack
on FireEye, allegedly by a foreign nation state sponsored entity, where
multiple tools were stolen for use in attacks later on.
In 2021, such attacks will not just be more
frequent, but they will also be very specific regarding who they target.
International cyber espionage will be one of the main motivators for cyber
attacks and we will see security vendors being attacked and compromised at an
even greater pace. Even the attacks that happened in 2020, like the FireEye
attack or the Sunburst
attack, that targeted the SolarWinds
supply chain, will have long lasting
effects. We have only seen the beginning of these attacks. Investigators
suspect, for example, that up to 250
organizations may have been compromised in the SolarWinds attack.
Actual results are yet to come.
Such attacks will not only create opportunities
for newer attacks, or variants/branches of the existing ones, but will also
drive cybersecurity innovation in 2021.
The Intelligent Edge will be Weaponized
One of the major innovations driven by 5G is
the implementation
of multi-access edge computing (MEC). Building intelligence into the
edge will boost the availability and efficiency of 5G networks. However,
keeping the global cybersecurity trends in mind, we can see that the
intelligent edge might be hijacked by attackers for launching different kinds
of attacks, both on the mobile core networks as well as on victims outside of
the realm of the service provider that has been compromised. If nothing else,
MEC can be used for propagating
malware into different networks for drone recruitment in IoT botnets.
Low-volume DDoS Attacks will be More Frequent
In 2020, even though we saw one of the largest DDoS
attacks ever recorded target one of the biggest names in the tech
industry, we also saw that a large number of DDoS attacks went unnoticed
because, even though the frequency of these attacks was very high, their size
was not. These high-frequency, low-volume attacks will keep the security
industry busy in 2021 and may be instrumental to disabling security
infrastructures or just acting as smokescreens for larger malware attacks such
as the recent Sunburst attack.
Five Million DDoS Weapons will be Added to the
Global DDoS Arsenal
The A10 Networks security research team observed
that the number of DDoS weapons doubled from around six million at
the end of 2019 to 12.5 million in 2020. This trend will remain the same in
2021 as more IoT devices come online with each passing day, with an expected
addition of at least five million weapons.
The large number of DDoS weapons will also
enable attackers to launch another record-breaking DDoS attack in 2021.We will
have to wait and see whether it will be made public by the victims or not.
2021 will be the Year of Zero Trust Implementation
2020 was the year of understanding what the Zero
Trust model is in a practical sense. Throughout the year, we saw security
vendors align their solutions with the Zero Trust model, adjust the model as we
got more clarity on what it means to be a Zero Trust user, device, or network,
and explore the policy changes necessary to a successful implementation of the
Zero Trust model. As the COVID-19 pandemic fast-tracked the move to SaaS and
made the “work from home” model mainstream, the importance of Zero
Trust security has gained critical importance.
Organizations now understand that Zero
Trust is not a specific device or vendor, but rather a series of
strategic policy and practical changes that help enable better security. A
successful implementation requires good understanding of what the Zero Trust
model is as well as the many diverse solutions that have to work in unison to
enable its implementation.
We believe that the concept of Zero Trust has
reached a level of maturity and clarity where it will be effectively adopted
and implemented by many organizations in 2021, and that it will become the
go-to security model for all types and sizes of organizations. Sophisticated
attacks like Sunburst will also drive the need for effective Zero Trust
implementation.
SASE Adoption will Accelerate
Since 2020 forced most of the workforce to work
remotely, attackers have been experimenting with new ways of exploiting
security loopholes or shortcomings exposed by these rapid changes. This
accelerated and will continue to accelerate the development and adoption of
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solutions.
However, since the move
to the cloud does not happen overnight, many organizations still have most of
their resources hosted on-premises. They will keep on struggling with maintaining
the remote work model and will revert back to business as it was once a vaccine
for COVID-19 becomes readily available and things go back to normal.
This, however, might be temporary as the world
has now experienced a pandemic and many organizations have already started
moving their businesses from on-premises to the SaaS-based model, with the
trend only being accelerated by COVID-19. In summary, SASE will be an essential
part of the enterprise security infrastructure in 2021 and beyond.
2021 will the Year TLS 1.3 Shines
TLS
1.3 will finally start seeing widespread adoption, in part, driven by
the adoption of QUIC/HTTP3 given that TLS 1.3 is built into it. Many vendors
support TLS 1.3 already and that will help drive the protocol into mainstream
use. Changes will also be made to the TLS 1.3 standard as the demand for
encrypted SNIs rise.
That said, TLS 1.2 will still remain the more
widely used choice as an encryption protocol over the internet since moving to
the newer version may prove to be expensive for many organizations. But as
QUIC/HTTP3 becomes more widely used by the end of the year, we may see this
change.
In conclusion, we are facing new, persistent
threats of all shapes and sizes, and we have to make sure that, going forward,
we face these threats with the best of our collective abilities. 2021 will be
the year of cybercriminal activities, but it will also drive innovations in
cybersecurity like never before.
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