When it comes to the evolving cybersecurity landscape of 2024, ransomware presents a unique challenge for professionals. Emerging threats underscore the need to revisit defense strategies and grasp the legal ramifications of successful ransomware attacks.

Our inaugural 2022 threat roundup report started by observing that “the year 2022 was eventful for cybersecurity.” As you can imagine, 2023 was no less eventful. Some of the key events included ongoing conflicts and the appearance of new ones, the emergence of critical vulnerabilities being mass exploited and the ever-increasing threat of cybercrime.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly infiltrating the business world and our daily lives. While revolutionizing how – and how efficiently – work gets done, it also introduces a new set of cybersecurity challenges. In response to the evolving, AI-shaped threat landscape, I foresee organizations adopting robust countermeasures.

The “fog of war” is a military term used to denote the uncertainty and confusion experienced on the battlefield. During periods of growing geopolitical conflict, it becomes increasingly hard to keep pace with new developments.

The cybersecurity landscape is currently undergoing significant changes. Many organizations have followed the guidance of analysts by investing in top-of-the-line products and solutions. However, they are now facing unexpected challenges. These challenges include steep financial burdens, a lack of the expected return on investment, and the persistent ability of hackers to breach their security defenses.

Forescout Vedere Labs has identified a total of 21 new vulnerabilities affecting Sierra Wireless AirLink cellular routers and some of its open source components such as TinyXML and OpenNDS, which are used in a variety of other products.

Almost a year ago to the day, on December 1 2022, Forescout Vedere Labs published a report detailing several hacktivist operations that targeted critical infrastructure in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and other geopolitical developments. Since the most recent chapter in the Hamas-Israel conflict started on October 7, there have been multiple similar claims of attacks from hacktivists taking opposing sides in the conflict.

On July 14, CISA published an industrial control system (ICS) advisory about two new critical vulnerabilities affecting Rockwell Automation ControlLogix communication modules: CVE-2023-3595 and CVE-2023-3596. CISA and Rockwell Automation recommended that asset owners patch vulnerable devices and add controls such as segmenting networks and using network intrusion detection.

This year for the 13th year in a row, the healthcare industry continues to experience the most expensive data breaches worldwide, at an average cost of nearly $11 million – double the cost for the next-highest industry, finance. That’s not surprising; ransomware attacks on hospitals and health systems are constantly in the news. Add to that the cybersecurity talent shortage, which is especially acute (pardon the pun) in the healthcare industry.

The threat intelligence data that Forescout Research – Vedere Labs curates comes from the millions of connected devices that we monitor, attacks we observe and dissect in our sandboxes, data relating to attacks that is traded on the Darknet, and from our Adversary Engagement Environment. We see a lot of data. One thing no cybersecurity researcher wants to see, however, is an attack on their own organization.