Trends that will shape cybersecurity threat landscape in 2022

Cybersecurity today is non-negotiable for individuals, businesses, and governments. 2021 saw cyberattacks increasing not just in size and scale, but also in sophistication. In fact, according to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), around 12.1 lakh cybersecurity incidents were observed till October 2021 in India.

Microsoft analyzes over 8.3 trillion signals each day for potential malicious activity in email, desktops, laptops, and cloud applications that people log into for work and personal life. Here are five cybersecurity paradigm shifts shared by Microsoft Security for 2022:

1. The rise of digital empathy

Digital empathy involves thinking about the ways in which people behave and engage with technology. By applying empathy to digital solutions, we can make these solutions more inclusive. In cybersecurity, that means building tools that accommodate more diversity with respect to people and their ever-changing circumstances, diverse perspectives, and varied abilities.

2. The Zero Trust journey is becoming increasingly important

Zero Trust is an "assume breach" security posture with strong identity authentication everywhere. As we look past the pandemic to a time when workforces and budgets rebound, Zero Trust will become the biggest area of investment for cybersecurity. This means that right now, every one of us is on a Zero Trust journey — whether we know it or not.

3. Diversity of data matters

Microsoft tracks over 24 trillion daily signals from a diverse set of products, services, and feeds around the globe. In 2021, the diversity of data allowed us to understand COVID-19 themed attacks in a broader context. This is an example of how the power and scale of the cloud and data have a clear advantage when it comes to combating threats.

4. The resiliency of a business is tied to its cyber resilience

Cyberattacks are increasing in frequency and sophistication and are deliberately targeting core business systems to maximise the impact of the attack or likelihood of a ransomware payout. With this context, we know a comprehensive approach to operational resilience must include cyber resilience. Microsoft benefits from a strategy that focuses on four basic threat scenarios: Planful events such as weather incidents, unplanned events such as earthquakes, legal events such as cyberattacks, and pandemics like COVID-19.

5. A greater focus on integrated security

The first half of 2021 brought into stark reality the agility and callousness of cybercriminals. To uncover shifting attacker techniques and stop them before they do real damage, organisations must be able to see across their apps, endpoints, network, and users. Facing a new economic reality, organisations will now be driven to reduce costs by adopting security capabilities built into their cloud and productivity platforms of choice. (IANS)