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Cyber security in 2022: New threats on the horizon?
As technology continues to advance into 2022 and beyond, one important aspect cannot be overlooked: cybersecurity. How will the digital industry grapple with threats in the coming year?
December 21, 2021 by Kevin Damask — Editor, Digital Signage Today
As technology continues to advance into 2022 and beyond, one important aspect cannot be overlooked — cybersecurity.
How will the digital industry grapple with new threats in the coming year? How can companies safeguard their digital assets from a cyber attack?
Two industry experts, Daniel Markuson, from NordVPN, and Jeffery Engle, of Conquest Cyber, provided cybersecurity predictions for 2022 in an email interview with Digital Signage Today.
In digital signage, virtual and augmented reality continued to gain steam in 2021. Companies are searching for ways to leverage VR/AR for large gains, but Markuson said consumers should be leery. He pointed to Facebook's rebranding as "Meta," at a time when the social media giant faced unprecedented scrutiny over user privacy, as an example of a tiger not really changing its stripes.
"Facebook's rebranding as 'Meta' came with an announcement of the 'metaverse' an expansive virtual reality space," Markuson said. "Of course, in a typical Facebook fashion, it is not unreasonable to expect that data collection in the new metaverse will be the main source of revenue."
Facebook's reputation and criticism over the Meta rebranding, could hurt the VR industry just as it's taking off, Markuson believes. In a tongue-in-cheek assessment, Markuson said the general public could be faced with a huge data leak "as long as '123456' remains the most popular password."
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| Markuson |
Markuson, who serves as a digital privacy expert, sees a variety of factors affecting cybersecurity, including political, economic, and social implications. Markuson believes, as the pandemic will continue to keep employees working remotely, companies will design tools to closely monitor production.
"Invasive employee monitoring will emerge as companies worldwide try to keep a tight grip on productivity at home," Markuson said.
The emergence of quantum computers, while an exciting breakthrough for the industry, could also come with emerging vulnerabilities.
"To defend against emerging threats, post-quantum cryptography is likely to start maturing alongside quantum computing," Markuson said.
Many companies are insured against data-stealing cyber attacks, but the insurance market could be in jeopardy too. Engle, president and chairman at Conquest Cyber, also does consulting for the U.S. Department of Defense's adversary emulation team. He said the current model for cyber insurance may not be solvent.
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| Engle |
"The prevalence of ransomware events and the associated payouts have made that approach unsustainable for the cyber insurance market and it has always been a terrible approach for the insured," Engle said. "Cyber events have far-reaching implications and a failure to evaluate risk and build cyber resilience commensurate with fiduciary responsibilities in this day and age is malpractice."
Engle, who specializes in risk management, national security and business process optimization, contends that the rise in premiums and lower coverage amounts are a justified response from insurers. Leaders in the cybersecurity industry, along with specialists in cyber engineering, GRC and other tech fields, could be faced with a difficult choice, according to Engle.
"Do we start to change the conversation and narrative around what our role is in allowing this to have occurred and work collectively to lower the risk pools so cyber insurers can play their critical role in transferring some of the financial risk OR do we continue to push our products and services as the savior without consideration of how they work together to enable integrated cyber resiliency?" Engle said.
Similar to previous years, Engle thinks 2022 will have both large ransomware attacks bound to make headlines, while some will be quietly handled. He believes the mix will cause some insurers to either leave the cyber insurance market or increase premiums, lower coverage levels and require more proof the insured are keeping their operations safeguarded.
"The bottom line is that cyber insurance is one of many critical tools for active cyber resiliency and like any other tool, when it is overused, it wears down and when it is used in replacement of the 'right' tool for the job, it performs poorly," Engle said.
About Kevin Damask
Kevin Damask is the editor of Digital Signage Today. He has more than 15 years of journalism experience, having covered local news for a variety of print and online publications.
