2021 Cybersecurity Predictions: How Bright is Our Future?


2021 is right around the corner.  A bit of online shopping season left, a set of major Winter holidays (in the Northern Hemisphere at least), then the new year.  After the, shall we say, challenges, of 2020, we can all hope it will be a better year overall.  This time of year is also when folks tend to make predictions about what we can expect going into the new year.  Folks in the security industry are no exception. Here are our cybersecurity predictions for 2021.

We have a byline up now over at Threatpost with some cybersecurity predictions: Cybersecurity Predictions For 2021: Robot Overlords No, Connected Car Hacks Yes.  It’s worth a read on its own.  But, while you’re here, let me sum it up.

Bad Guys Will Stay Bad

We really don’t expect cyberattacks to go away.  The fact is they will just grow more sophisticated over time and target a broader range of industries.  Their business models will probably expand to include even more of the compound attacks we’ve been seeing.  Attackers won’t just encrypt files to get a ransom.  They’ll add blackmail to the attack by threatening to expose the stolen data if they’re not paid, so even if we have backups the bad guys still make their money.  Or we suffer the loss.  Either way, it’s a win in their books.

We won’t see cyberattacks let up against healthcare or infrastructure, which will lead to someone dying as the direct result of a cyberattack.  Hopefully, crossing that line will lead to a more concerted effort by the international law enforcement community to address the issue.  But the challenge of State and State Sponsored actors will remain.

Cryptocurrency is gaining more traction in the financial world, but whether it takes hold or collapses is an open question.  Question or not, cybercriminals will continue to utilize it and we’ll continue to see cryptominer payloads as attackers leverage stolen compute in their effort to get something for nothing.  It seems likely someone will try and develop an ultralight miner that can run on IoT iron, trading raw compute power for myriad clients toiling away mining for virtual gold.

Ghosts in The Machines

IoT will continue to be a challenge is another of our…

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