Imperva is convinced that protecting their data should be the top priority for companies in 2021. In addition to the uncertainties caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the ongoing expansion of 5G and the IoT is opening up further gateways for hackers, who are setting up increasingly intelligent attacks and automating them thanks to ML and AI technologies.

Below are the top 5 predictions from Imperva, a provider of cyber security solutions:

Many breaches from 2020 will continue to be commonplace in 2021

The significant increase in cyber attacks amid the global pandemic has resulted in millions of unprotected files and data; some of these data leaks are already known, countless others are yet to be reported. The new year will also bring a record number of thefts with stolen credentials. This activity may fuel further discussions about general investment in cybersecurity and drive action on data protection regulation.
Digital transformation projects entail spending on data protection
In order for companies to further digitize their business models during the pandemic, IT teams had to migrate large amounts of data - with little or no insight into what exactly was stored. Failures of this kind could be publicized in 2021 when the focus returns to data protection and, for the first time, unsecured data sets lead to outages in the order of petabytes.

5G progress and the expansion of the IoT boost botnet armies

Cybercriminals will continue their sophisticated attacks in 2021 by exploiting vulnerabilities in household IoT devices. With 5G solutions mature and widely available, criminals will be able to exploit end devices for their own purposes - whether it's shutting down a network or stealing sensitive data. When combating cyber risks, it will become increasingly important how quickly threats can be responded to.

The emergence of 'intelligent' cyber attacks

The democratization of machine learning will mean smarter attacks that are harder to defend against and stop. Intelligent attackers will automate their attacks while learning from how the victim reacts, optimizing for more effective and damaging attacks. This heralds a new era of cybercrime that requires more advanced threat intelligence and increased security coverage.

Serverless computing becomes a playground for cybercriminals

While serverless solutions are more convenient for organizations, IT teams have often adopted these cloud applications without deeper scrutiny and without involving their security colleagues. In the new year, we can therefore expect to see more cyber attacks (e.g. DDoS attacks) targeting serverless computing environments.