The Biggest Cybersecurity Risks in 2022

As technology is evolving, the risk of having everything stored online being tampered with in any way is growing as well. Even recent events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, have increased the number of cyber-attacks across the globe.

We’re moving the majority of our lives online, which provides all those scammers, fraudsters, and hackers with a range of opportunities to strike and cause great chaos in the lives of the individuals, but also bigger organizations. To have a quality cybersecurity strategy in place, organizations will first need to be aware of the biggest cybersecurity risks surrounding them in 2022.

In this article, you will find an overview of all risks that might affect one’s cybersecurity and release a set of undesired actions that might lead to money loss and identity theft, to name a few.

Social Engineering

As one of the most dangerous hacking techniques, social engineering relies on human error instead of technical vulnerabilities. That is also the reason why these attacks are potentially more dangerous as it’s much easier to trick a human being than to breach a security system in an organization. As it’s been reported many times, most data breaches actually involve human interaction, so this area is desperately seeking solutions to protect personal and corporate sensitive data.

NFT Exploits

Non-fungible tokens are becoming quite popular among everyone seeking to buy, sell, or trade digital assets, from an artwork to a GIF, however, it still has a long way to go in terms of security. There are many vulnerabilities around NFTs, which are often ignored because of the general enthusiasm a new technology provides for its audience. NFT marketplaces are a hacking threat for NFT buyers as they have also been targets of hacks and exploits in the smart contracts.

One recent example is the NFT marketplace Opensea which was exploited by a hacker who got away with $1 million in non-fungible tokens. There is a need for serious improvement when it comes to security in this field, especially because users connect their digital wallets online and expose their digital assets that way.

Layer 2 solutions refer to a secondary framework or protocol that is built on top of an existing blockchain system. The main goal of these protocols is to solve the transaction speed and scaling difficulties that are being faced by the major cryptocurrency networks.

Configuration Mistakes

Even most professional security systems in organizations are likely to contain an error during the software installation process. When a misconfiguration occurs, there is a chance of it being exploited. Many cyber attacks occur because of an exploitable misconfiguration, and the number grows if an attacker has access to the internal system of the organization. Here, it might be beneficial for organizations to consider a layer 2 blockchain, a secondary framework or protocol built on top of an already existing blockchain system in the organization.

Mobile Device Vulnerabilities

Another consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic was an increase in mobile device usage. We spend more time on these tiny devices than ever before, which lead to adopting mobile wallets and touchless payment technology to improve our online buying experience as well as offline. However, such actions converted mobile device users into targets of cyberattacks. Users have been reporting a number of cases where their private information, mostly credit card data, was stolen. As the number of mobile devices users grows, this area is a larger target for cybercriminals.

Poor Cyber Hygiene

All of this indicates that most organizations and individuals are performing poor cyber hygiene. Understanding cybersecurity is crucial to be able to protect ourselves and for businesses to protect our data from any potential cyber attack. One of the ways to improve cyber hygiene is by strengthening the security stack of the organization. Cybersecurity stack is a term that refers to the visualization of numerous cyber security tools an organization utilizes to protect itself from cyber-attacks and risk.

After all, as long as we’re using technology, there will be risks of our information being accessed by someone with harmful intentions. This is why everyone in the organization, from the software developers to the business leaders needs to work together to find the most efficient solutions for protecting their customers and employees.