INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Enterprise Security

The Deep Instinct Threat Research team extensively monitored attack volumes and types and then extrapolated its findings to predict where the future of cybersecurity is heading , determine what motivates attackers , and most importantly , lays out the steps organizations can take now in order to protect themselves in the future .

One of the most pronounced takeaways from this research on 2021 threat trends is that bad actors are becoming more successful at evading AI / Machine Learning technologies , prompting organizations to redouble efforts in the innovation race .

Specific attack vectors have grown substantially , including a 170 % rise in the use of Office droppers along with a 125 % uptick in all threat types combined . The volume of all malware types is substantially higher versus pre-pandemic .

In addition , threat actors have made a discernable shift away from older programming languages , such as C and C ++, in favor of newer languages , such as Python and Go . Not only are these newer languages easier to learn and to program versus their predecessors , but they also have been less commonly used and are therefore less likely to be detected by cybersecurity tools or analyzed by security researchers .

“ Recent major events , such as Log4j and Microsoft Exchange server attacks , have placed a heightened priority on security , but these threats have long deserved the attention they ’ re just now getting on a global level ,” said Guy Caspi , CEO of Deep Instinct . most notable supply chain attack , Kaseya , compromised more than 1,500 companies through one unpatched zero-day vulnerability .

• The shift to high-impact and high-profile attacks verses stealth and long dwell-time attacks : In 2021 , Deep Instinct saw a transition to high-profile attacks with a massive impact . The most significant incident in 2021 was the Colonial Pipeline breach , which halted operations for six days , causing major disruptions across the US and demonstrated the significant and cascading impact of a well-executed malware attack .

• Public and private sector collaborations become more common : As Deep Instinct had predicted , there was greater partnership among international task forces this past year to identify and bring to justice key threat actors around the world . In early 2021 , an international taskforce co-ordinated by Europol and Eurojust seized Emotet infrastructure and arrested some of its operators . Other high-profile threat actors such as Glupteba became the target of private companies that joined forces to interrupt their activity as much as possible .

• The immediate impact of zero-day : In 2021 , there were major vulnerabilities being exploited and used within a single day of disclosing the vulnerability . One of the examples was the HAFNIUM Group .

• Cloud as a gateway for attackers : The transition to remote work has prompted many organizations to enable most of their services in the cloud rather than on premises . For those that are not experienced working with cloud services , there is the risk that misconfigurations or vulnerable , out-of-date components with external API access could be exploited . p

“ The results of this research shed light on the wide-ranging security challenges that organizations face on a daily basis . Deep Instinct was founded to bring a new approach based on Deep Learning to cybersecurity . We ’ re on a mission to provide relief to cyber defenders facing advanced threats that continue to spike in volume and sophistication .”

Additional report findings include the following key takeaways :

• Supply chain attacks : Large service offering companies became targets of significant supply chain attacks this past year with threat actors looking to not only gain access to their environments , but also target the environments of their customers by proxy . The

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