Chief information security officers (CISOs) around the world have struggled to defend their enterprises from a variety of risks in recent years, right from cloud migration required by remote work to an increased risk of cyberattacks brought on by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
CISOs now face a wider range of difficulties than in previous years due to the significant rise in hacking and security incidents. Beyond external threats, CISO challenges also include ongoing difficulties with day-to-day operations, such as budget approvals, staff retention, stakeholder communication, risk management, and a host of other issues. CISOs must contend with a skills shortage, issues with staff retention, a security environment that is becoming more complex owing to attacks on the software supply chain, and geopolitical tensions. The top 3 CISO challenges for 2023 will be discussed in this article.
Frequent Supply Chain Attacks
According to a recent survey of 1,200 security leaders across a dozen industries, over 90% of organizations have suffered a security breach due to vulnerabilities in their supply chain. Pair this with the fact that the average vendor ecosystem now includes over 3,700 companies (up from 1,013 in 2020), and it’s no surprise that the supply chain cyberattacks have quadrupled in the last year.
For example, the Kaseya attack disrupted operations in 1000s of downstream companies, demonstrating once again that who is attacked is often far more important than how they’re attacked. As software stacks and dependencies balloon, hackers will spend 2023 searching for key supply chain operators to take down. As the saying goes, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. A weak Cyber Security assessment process for vendors can lead to multiple risks and issues leading to major losses for the organization.
Hybrid Work Model
Millions of businesses are continuing their remote or hybrid work policies going into 2023. Consequently, the usual network and endpoint protections that served as the frontline defenses are no longer sufficient. Employees now work off of home WiFi networks, personal devices, and under unsupervised conditions.
As we turn towards 2023, it seems that remote work is here to stay, at least for the near future. Over the last year, CISOs have taken steps to address these security gaps, but securing remote working conditions still remains a major challenge for the cybersecurity industry throughout 2023. With geo-political tensions such as the Ukraine – Russia conflict, it is a great opportunity to utilize the Hybrid Work along with geo-graphically isolated staff to tackle such issues.
Underlying Vulnerable Components
Due to the ease of exploitation and prevalence across enterprise applications, the Log4j vulnerability is considered to be one of the most severe software flaws identified throughout the decades.
While it remains difficult to determine the full extent of the compromise, nearly a third of all web servers in the world employ the vulnerable code. These include popular enterprise and consumer technologies such as Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Oracle, Cisco, Google, and Minecraft. U.S. officials estimate that hundreds and millions of devices have been exposed and that more than 4,000,000 hacking attempts have been made to date, nearly half of which were conducted by malicious groups. This opens a completely new Pandora’s box as a major security issue is just waiting to be discovered and can potentially infect millions of systems at the time of discovery itself. The capability to identify third-party libraries and issues is the key to securing the network and systems from external threats by identifying the components at the right time.
Conclusion
With Cygnet, Secure your cyberspace with the help of security experts. Our team will help create cyber resilience, move to a zero-trust architecture, secure your cloud infrastructure, manage all cybersecurity risks effectively and avoid regulatory penalties by having updated regulatory compliance.
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Author
Cygnet.One
Living the trust
Cygnet.One is a technology consulting and development company, that co-creates business growth strategies and delivers partnership value through the Power of Digital. We specialize in leading technologies such as Cloud Computing, AI/ML, and Blockchain with a focus on innovation and agility.