In our Year in Review blog post, we covered the events and trends in cybersecurity over the past year. Which attack vectors will evolve and who will be the primary targets this year? Today we dive into three cybersecurity predictions for 2022.
Phishing will continue to evolve in 2022. We saw a large move to text message phishing, or smishing, this year. These will continue along with high-quality spear-phishing campaigns. The most common cause of a breach last year, at 20%, was stolen user credentials. We look for criminals to use publicly available information of employees to create more convincing and sophisticated phishing campaigns to continue to exploit user credentials this year.
Successful phishing attacks accounted for 36% of breaches this year, which is up 11% from 2020. Both, the continued evolution of phishing strategies along with employees working from home, contributed to the increase in successful breaches. Employees are more susceptible to phishing attacks from home. Consumer-grade networks are not as successful at stopping the phishing request at the door, and distractions at home make employees more likely to click on the malicious link.
Ransomware will continue to be the primary attack vector in 2022. The average cost of a ransomware attack rose from $3.86 million in 2020 to $4.24 million in 2021. We talked about the triple threat of ransomware in a recent podcast, and we look for criminals to continue to use or manipulate data in order to make money.
Small and medium-sized businesses will become the primary targets of phishing and ransomware in 2022. Large businesses increased their cybersecurity budget during the pandemic, and spending is expected to jump 3.6% in 2022. All of this defense spending by large businesses and governments means criminals will have to target more small and medium-sized businesses to continue to be successful.
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