Predictions for cybersecurity in 2024
Author : Candid Wüest, Gaidar Magdanurov, Acronis
19 December 2023
Two members of the Acronis team share some predictions on how the cybersecurity, AI and IT industry will evolve in 2024.
Candid Wuest, VP Cyber Protection Research
AI continues to evolve, and cybercriminals are getting more creative. With the significant rise of AI in the past year, there's been equally increasing security risks. We've seen a spike in FBI reports regarding the creation of deep fakes through generative AI. Cybercriminals have been exploiting deep fakes, with the intention to cause serious consequences through misinformation, such as a public crisis, family extortion, or severe stock disruptions. It is probable that this will happen more often as the technology becomes better understood, especially with financial incentives. Some cybercriminals may also start using AI in creative ways to extract sensitive information. Phishing has become the "prime child" of generative AI, and I predict that these risks will still pose a threat without intervention. In 2024, I believe we will see a large number of new regulations surrounding AI.
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is changing. Historically, MFA has been the tried-and-true method for best protecting sensitive information. This may be changing, however, as we've seen multiple high-profile MFA and social engineering attacks take place. As hackers have found ways to breach the system and circumvent the MFA, it could lead to a shift towards anti-phishing MFA technology becoming more widely used. This anti-phishing MFA process allows the user to log in by receiving a specific token or code that is not accessible on another device and is bound to the user's session.
Candid Wuest, VP Cyber Protection Research, Acronis
Gaidar Magdanurov, President, Marketing, Acronis
Holistic cyber protection will continue to be prevalent in cybersecurity. Cyber protection – integrated cybersecurity and backup – has become table stakes for cyber defences. Given the widespread use of AI and automation, I predict that more multi-layered defence tactics will become the norm to avoid large-scale attacks that are customised through AI. This includes integrating various measures, such as prevention with vulnerability assessment and patch management, detection with Endpoint Detection and Response solutions, remediation including recovery from a backup, and forensics using the data from backups.
Gaidar Magdanurov, President, Marketing, Acronis
Continuous evolution of applications towards platforms
Consumer and business customers have become accustomed to the seamless experience of integrated applications, pushing vendors to better integrate with other applications used by customers. As integration platforms increase, I predict that we’ll see a surge in API exposure. These platforms allow the provision of additional capabilities for customers at low additional cost to the vendors, as well as vendors of specialised applications, to get immediate access to a customer base of a platform vendor.
As a standard feature in applications, we may see a newfound dependence on AI. Given the availability of language models and various services offering AI assistants as a service, AI has become a standard practice in every application. Over the next year, this may lead to unexpected results from people's over-reliance on AI assistants, causing more mistakes that are more difficult to spot. It will be even more important that the analysts outsourcing work to the AI assistants require better training and employees to improve the quality of work. Organisations that are not only applying AI assistants, but also those that prioritise and emphasise AI training and skill-development, will see the true benefits of this technology.
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