More bots, more money, less talent

More online fraud, recession-proof budgets and continued talent shortages are to be expected in 2023, according to cybersecurity professionals who spoke to TechNewsWorld.

Online fraud, driven by persistent supply chain shortages and the proliferation of bots, will continue to rise in the coming year, predicted Benjamin Fabre, co-founder and CEO of data maker DataDome. a bot and online fraud protection solution in New York City.

“If you look at the volume of threats, they’re exploding and it’s not going to slow down,” he told TechNewsWorld.

The scarcity caused by supply chain shortages has driven up the prices of many items, creating an attractive atmosphere for scammers. “We are seeing limited product inventories create a bubble around their prices, leading to more bot activity and online fraud, which I expect will continue fully into 2023,” observed Fabre.

The use of robots is gaining momentum at the start of the new year. “We’ve already started to see this shift lately where many people have created their own bots to monitor housing price changes, monitor game console availability and scrape the markets with browser extensions,” said Fabre’s colleague, DataDome Head of Research Antoine Vastel.

“We believe it won’t stop, as building advanced bots becomes easier and easier,” he told TechNewsWorld.

Spending optimism

Vastel also foresees an expansion of scalping activities and the use of scraper bots in 2023.

“While the scalping was mostly about concert tickets, it has spread to more and more products – sneakers, game consoles, GPUs, luxury items,” he explained. “I predict that with the current product shortages and supply chain challenges, scalping will intensify and expand across all industries into new items and products as the potential for resellers to earn money increases.”

He also noted that more and more tools are appearing to facilitate the creation of advanced bots. “Whether it’s open-source libraries that allow attackers to forge their fingerprints, or bots-as-a-service that makes building advanced bots as easy as making an API request, we believe this will help the creation of scraper bots,” he said.

Despite Cassandra’s recession warnings, the cybersecurity community remains optimistic about spending in 2023. Alberto Yépez, co-founder and managing director of Forgepoint Capital, a venture capital firm in San Mateo, Calif., pointed out that ‘in 2021, cybersecurity spending increased 12% from the previous year to some US$150 billion, and in 2022 spending is expected to exceed US$156 billion.

PUBLICITY

“This trend will continue into 2023 as the threat landscape becomes increasingly active and complex,” he told TechNewsWorld.

“As ransomware continues to soar, organizations will seek help to modernize their defenses and revamp threat detection and response capabilities, knowing that attacks are now inevitable,” he explained.

The market will be further driven by regulatory compliance standards, migration to the cloud and global digital transformation in business and government, Yépez continued, especially as the hybrid workforce model evolves. a response to the pandemic to a regular way of doing business.

“All of these components help organizations meet business needs, but simultaneously complicate their cybersecurity posture and create the need for design-to-scale approaches,” he said. “As a result, cybersecurity will continue to emerge as a key enabler across all business functions, and organizations will prioritize proactive investments in 2023.”

Perilous cost reduction

Jadee Hanson, CIO and CISO of Code42, a national endpoint security and data protection company, admits that some organizations will seek to cut corners by cutting cybersecurity budgets, but say they do so at their peril .

“Once the rumbles of economic uncertainty begin, wary CFOs will start looking for areas of superfluous spending to cut in order to keep their business ahead of the game,” she told TechNewsWorld.

“For the uninformed C-suite, cybersecurity spending is sometimes viewed as an added expense rather than a core business function that helps protect company reputation and bottom line,” she continued. “These organizations may try to cut costs by decreasing their investment in cybersecurity tools or talent, thereby reducing their company’s ability to properly detect or prevent data breaches and exposing them to potentially disastrous outcomes.”

PUBLICITY

“This should be of particular concern amid persistent ransomware attacks, and 2023 should be another tough year,” she said. “Companies that maintain effective cybersecurity resources will fare much better in the long run than those that make massive cuts.”

Fabre added that he doesn’t see the economy having a negative impact on cybersecurity in 2023 because the cost of not investing in cybersecurity is too high. “Companies have too much to lose – financially, in terms of reputation, competitiveness – if their data or that of their customers is hacked.”

“When you consider the increasingly scrupulous legal and regulatory environment in which companies operate,” he continued, “the risk of not being privacy compliant or secure outweighs the short-term benefits. end of shrinking cybersecurity budgets”.

Talent gap to continue

As in previous years, personnel issues will continue to plague the cybersecurity industry in 2023. generations to enter the field,” observed Caroline Vignollet, senior vice president of research and development at OneSpan, a company identity security in Chicago.

“Cybersecurity education is essential, and while we are seeing more and more universities developing cybersecurity courses, they still remain very small compared to the critical challenges that organizations face on a daily basis,” he said. she told TechNewsWorld.

PUBLICITY

“For this new generation to succeed,” she continued, “universities need to expand cyber education and provide real hands-on training in cybernetics, not just theoretical training.”

Businesses and employees must also do their part, she added. “Everyone in an organization plays a role, even if it’s just to raise awareness of phishing emails and avoid unsafe links,” she said.

Vignollet urged organizations to better support their cyber teams. “As cyber leaders, we have a responsibility to create safe environments and let everyone interested in the field know that,” she observed.

“In fact, one of the most important KPIs to look for in employee engagement surveys is whether employees feel comfortable talking to management,” she said. note. “It’s the most effective way to avoid burnout as this growing talent gap continues into 2023.”