Security News > 2020 > November > Hackers have only just wet their whistle. Expect more ransomware and data breaches in 2021.
Threat actors found success infecting businesses with ransomware and stealing company data, turning those ransomware attacks into data breaches.
"The seemingly crazy predictions of the past around the cost of ransomware attacks on the healthcare industry stand to be proven true in 2021. We've seen a substantial rise in ransomware since the onset of COVID, and as the space race 2.0 continues, so will the prevalence of attacks," said John Ford, IronNet cyber strategist and former healthcare CISO. With countries all around the world hunting for a COVID vaccine there will be more nation-state attacks leveraging ransomware and an increase in cloud-based ransomware attacks as healthcare systems expedite their transition to meet the growing remote needs, Ford predicts.
As a result of the accelerated shift to the cloud due to the pandemic, in 2021 attackers will not only shift their focus more to cloud infrastructure and cloud applications, but also continue to advance their techniques, said Michael Raggo, cloud security expert at CloudKnox.
CloudKnox research found that more than 80% of the cloud users have the ability to escalate permissions that can be very hard to track in the cloud infrastructure, according to Raggo.
Jason Rader, national director network & cloud security at Insight Enterprises, believes that if security leaders still have a viable business in 2021, they have "Already done some things very right." 2021 is a time for security leaders to become more efficient with their budgets and more strategic in supporting the business, he said.