The year 2021 started off with organizations slowly reopening their doors and welcoming back their employees. This couldn’t happen overnight, of course. It meant devising new IT strategies to accommodate a hybrid workforce. Ensuring the organization’s business continuity is crucial for it’s sustenance, and this became the IT department’s primary mission.
Organizations need to stay ahead of the ever-evolving security landscape. It’s no secret that Zero Trust security is crucial for successful endpoint protection. Due to the rapid transition to a remote workforce and shift from the traditional data center into dynamic cloud infrastructure we’ve witnessed in the last year, more and more companies are finding the need to accelerate their digital transformation to keep pace with the expanding threat surface.
The unexpected and rapid switch from the global workforce to the WFH setup caused by the coronavirus pandemic has prompted companies around the world to make extensive infrastructure adjustments to support employees working exclusively from home. According to the new IDC forecast, the number of mobile workers in the US will steadily increase from 78.5 million in 2020 to 93.5 million in 2024 over the next four years.
It’s been a whirlwind year for Styra — from going fully remote as a company to raising $40 million in Series B Funding to more than doubling our workforce. We have a lot to be thankful for as a company, and before we say “goodbye” to 2021 and “hello'' to 2022, I wanted to take a moment to recap some of my favorite moments and initiatives of this past year.
Business security is often associated with larger companies where employees spend most of their time in front of computers. This stereotype can lead small business owners – especially ones outside the tech industry – to think they’ll never be targeted by hackers and don’t need to invest in security. It’s a mistake that cybercriminals are exploiting.
Malware targeting Linux-based operating systems, commonly deployed in Internet of Things (IoT) devices, have increased by 35% in 2021 compared to 2020, according to current CrowdStrike threat telemetry, with the top three malware families accounting for 22% of all Linux-based IoT malware in 2021.
Organizations across industries are increasingly concerned about their cybersecurity posture and overall ransomware preparedness – and rightfully so – with the 64% increase in attacks from 2019 to 2020 (304 million attacks worldwide in 2020). We have also seen a 2x increase in demand for ransomware preparedness assessments and exercises.
Since the return of the Qakbot Trojan in early September 2021, especially through SquirrelWaffle malicious spam campaigns, we’ve received a few Qakbot samples to analyze from our Trustwave DFIR and Global Threats Operations teams.
