Trends To Watch Out For In The New Year

The number of cyber attacks in the country has witnessed three-fold increase over as many years. According to government data, in 2019, total number of cyber security incidents tracked by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) was 3,94,499. The number spiked to 11,58,208 in the year 2020 and further increased to 14,02,809 in 2021. This year, as many as 6,74,021 cyber security incidents were reported till June.

Experts suggest, however, that the magnitude and novelty of digital attacks coming in 2023 will only get more aggressive as cybersecurity teams around the world are presented with a task unlike any other: securing access to the data of their individual organisations over hundreds of remote access points.

Here are some of the trends to watch out for in 2023:

Accelerated 5G adoption to deepen vulnerabilities

5G connections in India are expected to reach 88 million by 2025, according to a recent report by GSMA. While the spotlight is currently focused on delivering higher data speeds, latency improvements, and the overall functional redesign of mobile networks, the cloud will expose the 5G core to cloud security vulnerabilities, according to cyber security company Palo Alto networks. With only 114% of Indian organisations equipped with a plan to secure their 5G/4G environment, CISOs will need to be wary of large-scale attacks from any source, including the operator’s own network.

Securing connected medical devices will be critical

Digitisation has enabled new healthcare capabilities such as virtual healthcare and remote diagnosis. But the prevalence of legacy and sensitive data will make healthcare an attractive target for cyber threat actors. Ensuring the cybersecurity of medical IoT will be important as ever for patient safety as the closer a patient is to a device, the greater the likelihood for weaponization by bad actors, according to Palo Alto.

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