Cybersecurity Trends, Threats, And Predictions For 2023

2022 has been another year of high-profile data breaches, mirroring the years before in the growing number and sophistication of cyber threats. Cyber-attacks have become part of a boiling cauldron and some of the brining liquid has seeped over into the corporate and government digital landscapes.

Consistently, phishing, insider threats, business email compromise, lack of skilled cybersecurity workers, and misconfigurations of code have been common trends throughout the past decade. They still will be trends in the coming year, but other factors and developments will also permeate a precarious cybersecurity ecosystem. Let us explore some of them.

2023 Cyber Trends:

Geopolitics and Critical Infrastructure And Supply Chain Attacks:

The 2020 World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Risks Report listed cyberattacks on global Critical Infrastructure (CI) as a top concern. WEF noted that “attacks on critical infrastructure have become the new normal across sectors such as energy, healthcare, and transportation.” ^]The Global Risks Report 2020 | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)

That global risk was exemplified in the Russian invasion of Ukraine which set a new stage for the use of cyber weapons aimed at disabling critical infrastructure. In accordance with the kinetic attacks, Russia has incessantly attempted to target key Ukrainian critical infrastructures to help enable their war efforts. Russian cyberattacks have succeeded in shutting down Ukraine’s power grid in the past and Ukraine’s power grid is still under bombardment from both physical and digital missiles. For the most part, the attacks have been thwarted by a well-trained and prepared Ukrainian cyber force. Bust Russian and Russian proxy cyber capabilities are still significant and pose threat not only to Ukrainian infrastructure but to the West in general as evidenced by the Colonial Pipeline attack and by the Solar Winds breach. They will intensify and spread in the coming…