It’s that time of year again, time for an annual report discussing the cybersecurity trends we can expect to see in 2022. We’ve put together our predictions based on hundreds of customer conversations, market developments, technology advancements and cyber events from the past year.

Cybercrime is increasing steadily, with hackers expanding their targets and increasing their sophistication. They’re raiding companies for valuable data like credit card numbers and intellectual property (IP), and also targeting banks and other financial institutions to disrupt the world economy, as we’ve seen with the $81 million heist from the central bank of Bangladesh.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is growing rapidly , giving hackers an ever-increasing number of devices to access and exploit. In fact, by 2022 the number of networked devices will outnumber people on Earth—it’s expected to be close to 50 billion! The sophistication of cyber attacks is growing as well . Malware has been growing more sophisticated, along with a rise in both financially motivated cybercrime and espionage operations.

And cyber criminals are starting to move away from big-name ransomware like CryptoLocker and focusing on smaller, targeted attacks. It won’t just be software companies that get attacked . Cybercriminals will increasingly attack the supply chain – hardware, firmware or even semiconductors themselves can all become points of compromise within an organization’s network for an attacker. Security won’t just be an IT issue —it will become a boardroom issue and top priority for CEOs.

With the increasing number of devices that hackers can target, every company is at risk. There isn’t any one industry that’s immune from cybercrime, either—we’ll see hospitals crippled by ransomware attacks as well as banks attacked to steal money or disrupt transactions. Cybersecurity will become a boardroom issue as CEOs recognize the business value of protecting their systems and data. Adopting a ‘mobile first’ attitude to cybersecurity isn’t enough.

As organizations start putting their security programs in place, they’ll realize that ‘mobile first’ doesn’t go far enough – IT needs to incorporate mobile, IoT, cloud and other rapidly expanding technologies into their security strategies. Businesses will start to use more advanced analytics techniques.

Traditional cybersecurity tools focus on reacting after there’s been a cyber breach or incident, but newer tools are starting to look at the data in new ways using advanced analytics techniques. These solutions can help prioritize responses based on potential risk and return, and also explore potential ‘what if’ scenarios to see how an organization might be impacted.

Ransomware on the rise , payment platforms becoming more secure, and an increase in the number of data breaches are just three of the trends that will continue to shape cybersecurity in 2022.

While there is no way to predict with absolute certainty what will or won’t occur in the next five years, extrapolating from current trends delivers valuable insight into where the cybersecurity market is headed.

This report aims to help organizations better prepare for the future by understanding what they can expect in five key areas of cyber security.

1) Cyber Threats – The number of ransomware attacks will rise substantially every year through 2022, with criminals increasingly targeting smaller businesses and other organizations that don’t have sizable budgets for cybersecurity measures.

Indeed, cybercriminals are constantly seeking out new ways to make more money, and ransomware appears to be their new favored tactic.

The reason why is clear: It works . The more organizations are forced to pay the ransom, the greater the incentive for criminals to keep escalating their efforts through 2022.

2) Data Breaches – By 2022 more data breaches will be caused by internal actors rather than external ones.

This conclusion is supported by the rapid increase in data breaches caused by employees, as well as recent revelations from some high-profile cases.

In some instances, criminal organizations have been able to hack into a company’s system and steal huge amounts of data on their own. In other situations, however, hackers have been able to manipulate employees into compromising their own companies.

3) Malware – Malware is becoming more difficult to detect with antivirus software, and IT security teams need to come up with new strategies for protecting their organizations.

Malicious code has become smarter and therefore harder for traditional antivirus tools to recognize and stop before it can cause damage. As a result, companies should consider investing in threat-intelligence software that can help them identify new attacks early on and respond to malware threats more quickly.

4) IT Skills Gap – The skills gap will continue to widen each year through 2022 because of an increasing demand for cybersecurity professionals and relatively few qualified workers available to fill the roles.

It’s estimated that there will be 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs by 2022.

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