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Forecast indicates that remote and cloud-based systems will be aggressively targeted in the coming year

Trend Micro this week issued its predictions for cybersecurity trends in 2021. In its forecast, the company predicts that cybercriminals will target home networks, remote working software and cloud systems in 2021.

In its predictions report, Turning the Tide, Trend Micro forecasts that online malefactors will concentrate on home networks in 2021. Attackers will seek to leverage these networks as a staging platform to launch attacks on corporate IT and IoT networks.

Post pandemic trend toward home working offers criminals a chance

Jon Clay, director of global threat communications for Trend Micro, explained that home working opens up new vulnerabilities.

“As we begin to enter a post-pandemic world, the trend for remote working is likely going to stick for many organizations,” he said. “We predict more aggressive attacks to target corporate data and networks.”

“Security teams will need to double down on user training, extended detection and response and adaptive access controls,” Clay continued. “This past year was all about surviving: now it’s time for businesses to thrive, with comprehensive cloud security as their foundation.”

The predictions report states that end users who regularly access sensitive data will be at greatest risk. Such users include HR professionals accessing employee data as well as sales managers working with sensitive customer information.

Cybercriminals will also adopt as-a-service models

As enterprises transfer more work to the Cloud, access-as-a-service business models of cybercrime will grow, according to Trend Micro. These models will allow the targeting of home networks of high-value employees, corporate IT and IoT networks.

IT security teams will need to tighten up work from home policies to tackle the complexity of hybrid environments. These are the instances where work and personal data reside together. The report foresees the increased use of “zero-trust” security schemes in order to secure distributed work forces.

Trend Micro predicts that 2021 will also see a continued increase in threats to cloud systems. These threats can originate with uneducated users, configuration errors, and hackers trying to commandeer cloud servers in order to deploy their malicious container images.

Tip: Trend Micro strongly focuses on the multicloud