Cyber Security Trends 2023: Securing our hybrid lives

Living a hybrid life, counting benefits and costs

ESET’s predicted trend for 2023 is that the changes in human behavior online, expressed in both professional and personal lives, will further blur the line between the physical world and our engineered virtual worlds. As security professionals, we are confronting the implications of these changes across the IT ecosystem, especially from cloud-powered apps to which we all increasingly entrust our enjoyment, professional success, privacy, and security.

However we got here (certainly helped along through COVID-19 lockdowns), we’re here now! And where is that exactly? Likely, even now we are logged in to our preferred cloud-powered environment. We are talking about large-scale, cloud-enabled digital environments like Discord, Slack, and Microsoft Teams. We could include many social apps like Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, and Tinder, or even games like Fortnite and VALORANT. There are too many to count, but all forecast one reality: millions of IT users forging their hybrid lives and recasting our definitions of security and privacy.

This super bloom of cloud-powered environments has brought unimagined opportunities to create, collaborate, buy, sell, and play. Going beyond the scope of previous cloud-based technologies, which first freed users from limitations associated with hardware costs and long intervals between updates, today’s cloud-based environments bring transformative hybrid opportunities. And while we have gone all in on what the cloud can do for us, unforeseen dangers await.

HYBRID LIVES POWERED BY THE CLOUD AND SECURED BY…?

Along with great opportunities, the immersive multifeatured cloud-powered environments we’ve adopted for work, play, education, data storage, and connected lifestyles have also opened up pathways for cybercrime. The scale of these always up-to-date platforms, with millions of users logged in concurrently from desktop, mobile, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, has a hand in creating a massive, shared threat surface.

With some cloud-powered environments even offering the rawest of material – free server space – all have the potential to help create, house, and share vast amounts of personal data and intellectual property, even to millions of fellow users. Herein, this wealth of human expression is simultaneously a wealth of data tempting everyone from average joes to entrepreneurs to seasoned cybercriminals.

James Shepperd, ESET Security Editor