A ‘NEW’ Cybersecurity Philosophy for the New Year

It’s the end of another year. It feels a bit “Groundhog Day”— like a repeat of the end of 2020—as we head into a new year with the world battling the COVID pandemic and IT teams around the world responding to a massive cybersecurity event.   If we focus on the right things, though, we can break the cycle in 2022.   

Looking Back at 2021

Ransomware continued to be a considerable threat in 2021. Ransomware gangs crippled the flow of oil in the United States with the attack on Colonial Pipeline and disrupted the food supply chain with the attack on JBS Meat Packing. We also saw ransomware gangs innovate new ways to extort victims, and ransom demands grow to  tens of millions of dollars. 

Microsoft played a central role in cybersecurity this year—and not in a good way. Critical vulnerabilities and configuration errors in Microsoft products made headlines consistently throughout 2021. Companies of all sizes and industries around the world depend on Microsoft operating systems, cloud platforms, and applications to get things done, and they are faced with a lose-lose situation of Microsoft software exposing them to risk while Microsoft pushes mediocre security tools to protect the vulnerabilities it created. 

As 2020 came to a close, the cybersecurity community and businesses around the world were scrambling to address the bombshell of the SolarWinds attack. A year later, the Log4Shell vulnerability is wreaking havoc and forcing cybersecurity vendors and IT security teams to race to mitigate or patch the flaw. Fortunately, Cybereason shared the LogOut4Shell vaccine that prevents the flaw from being exploited.    

While we worked with Defenders to face these challenges, Cybereason also continued to grow and build momentum. The company more than doubled in size—leapfrogging past 1,000 employees. We secured $275 million in crossover financing to continue to fuel our growth, and partnered with Google Cloud to introduce the first true XDR solution—Cybereason XDR powered by Google Cloud. 

"NEW" Approach for the New Year

When we come back to work next week, it will be a new year—a fresh start. While we raise glasses of champagne and ring in the New Year, though, threat actors around the world are also preparing for the year ahead, so we all have to be ready to defend.

I’ve already shared my thoughts on cybersecurity trends and what we will likely face in 2022. The threat landscape continues to expand and evolve, and our adversaries—whether cybercriminals or nation-states—are constantly looking for new and creative ways to exploit weaknesses to achieve their goals. 

It is our job to defend effectively against those attacks. We have a number of core values that we practice at Cybereason. There are three in particular that are important for the broader cybersecurity community:

  • Never Give Up. The sheer volume of attacks is sometimes overwhelming. It can be daunting, but Defenders have to stay in the arena and continue to fight.
  • Ever Evolving. Threat actors are constantly developing new exploits and innovating creative attack techniques. Defenders must continuously evolve and adapt—understand how cybercriminals think and work and stay one step ahead.
  • Win As One. We are all Defenders. We are in this together. We are stronger when we collaborate and cooperate to address cybersecurity challenges. 

We can count on our cyber adversaries to try and make life difficult for Defenders in 2022. If we focus on these core values—a NEW philosophy for cybersecurity for the New Year—we can reverse the adversary advantage. 

I wish everyone a safe and happy New Year, and I look forward to what we can achieve together in the year to come. 

Lior Div
About the Author

Lior Div

Lior Div, CEO and co-founder of Cybereason, began his career and later served as a Commander in the famed Unit 8200. His team conducted nation-state offensive operations with a 100% success rate for penetration of targets. He is a renowned expert in hacking operations, forensics, reverse engineering, malware analysis, cryptography and evasion. Lior has a very unique perspective on the most advanced attack techniques and how to leverage that knowledge to gain an advantage over the adversary. This perspective was key to developing an operation-centric approach to defending against the most advanced attacks and represents the direction security operations must take to ensure a future-ready defense posture.

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