Risk management firm CyberCube has identified four industries that are likely to be targeted by cyber criminals this year.
Outlined in the company’s latest Global Threat Briefing, the four industries are healthcare, manufacturing, education, and utilities.
The report was authored by William Altman, principal cyber security consultant, and Darren Thomson, head of cyber security strategy, both of CyberCube.
Writing about the healthcare industry, Altman and Thomson said: “Costs will be highest for smaller healthcare organizations that have poor cyber resilience. Ransomware operators are likely to target hospitals that can least afford unplanned downtime.”
On education: “Opportunistic RaaS affiliates will continue to exploit low levels of cyber maturity in education. Increased reliance on digital mediums for education will put schools at higher risk of cyber attacks.”
On manufacturing: “Businesses with low visibility into Operational Technology (OT) are at increased risk of experiencing an IT attack that impacts OT. The focus should be on locking down remote connectivity solutions (RDP, VPN, etc) and credentials.”
And utilities: “An increasing number of critical utilities (e.g. water, energy and transportation) could be targeted by APTs. Criminals scanning the Internet for vulnerabilities will often accidentally find utilities.”
Overall, the company predicted a more-active 2022 in this space.
The report’s authors said: “In the first half of 2022, we can expect to see an active cyber threat landscape with more digital supply chain and Single Point of Failure (SPoF) attacks. Since 2020, the number of SPoF targeted supply chain attacks involving widely-used software vendors has increased steadily.
“This tactic is a preferred method for nation state APTs conducting widespread espionage campaigns. CyberCube expects to see ransomware threat actors also targeting software supply chain SPoF. The recent Kaseya VSA and Log4j security events are a sign that supply chain SPoF attacks will become not only more frequent but also more severe.”
It is not hard to throw a stone and hit a cyber-related story. As reported a few days ago on Reinsurance News, Allianz has said that cyber is the ‘top concern’ for businesses this year.
Other cyber-centric stories recently on these pages include Raf Sanchez of Beazley predicted that the cyber landscape in 2022 was set to increase, while a number of analysts notes last week that rates within the cyber reinsurance market were continuing to harden.
