Looking ahead to the cybersecurity challenges of 2022

Just in case you didn't have enough to worry about at the moment, the Information Security Forum has published its Threat Horizon 2022 report, looking ahead to the cyber challenges of the next two years.

Balancing today's realities with forecasts that push the limits of thinking, the report highlights nine major threats, broken down into three themes, that organizations can expect to face as a result of developments in technology.

"By 2022, organizations will be plunged into crisis as merciless attackers exploit weaknesses in immature technologies and take advantage of an unprepared workforce. At the same time, natural forces will wreak havoc on infrastructure. Invasive technologies will be embraced across both industry and consumer markets, creating an increasingly tumultuous and unpredictable security environment," says Steve Durbin, managing director of ISF. "Organizations will have to adapt quickly to survive when digital and physical worlds collide. Those that don't will find themselves exposed to threats that will outpace and overwhelm them."

The three key themes identified are:

• Invasive technology disrupting the everyday: New technologies are forecast to further invade every element of daily life with sensors, cameras and other devices embedded in homes, offices, factories and public spaces. A constant stream of data will flow between the digital and physical worlds, with attacks on the digital world directly impacting the physical.
• Neglected infrastructure crippling operations: The technical infrastructure on which organizations rely will face threats from a growing number of sources: man-made, natural, accidental and malicious. In a world where constant connectivity and real-time processing is vital to doing business, even brief periods of downtime will have severe consequences.
• A crisis of trust undermining digital business: Bonds of trust will break down as emerging technologies and the next generation of employee's tarnish brand reputations, compromise the integrity of information and cause financial damage. Those that lack transparency, place trust in the wrong people and controls, and use technology in unethical ways will be publicly condemned.

"The purpose of our Threat Horizon series of reports isn't to be alarmist. What these reports are there to do is highlight potential threats that allow organizations to put in place an appropriate response if they consider those threats to be a very real risk to their business," Durbin adds. "What our latest Threat Horizon report does is reflect that yes, digital and physical worlds are combining, but much more importantly, reflects that we're going to have to change our overall thinking about the way that we deal with the risks that emanate from some of these threats. If we're going to be effective, we need to address many of these issues that we've just scratched the surface on all the way through to 2022."

You can download an executive summary of the report from the ISF site.

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