Cybersecurity trends in 2021 and what to expect in 2022

Have you ever wondered how many cybersecurity trend predictions actually come true? Today, we’re looking at last year’s predictions to see how much security researchers got right. We’re also offering our predictions for 2022 as a bonus.

Cybersecurity trends in 2021

Many cybersecurity experts gave their predictions for 2021. Luckily, NordVPN’s Zen Bahar has already done the research and distilled the major predictions of 2021 into 16 distinct cybersecurity trends. You can find Zen’s post here. To make things even simpler, we divided Zen’s trends into four categories.

The pandemic would transform how we work

Two cybersecurity trends mentioned lockdows and working from home. Specifically, because of the lockdowns, many more people would start using online services to vote, get groceries, and more. At the same time, remote work would force companies to double down on security measures.

Cybersecurity in politics would gain momentum

A lot of predictions related to politics suggested that 2021 would be the year for political change. To start, several countries were about to release their GDPR-style privacy legislation, including Brazil, Canada, and Singapore.

Also, secure e-voting, better data management, and the Big Tech practices were all predicted to get their share of attention. Lastly, the EU’s Digital Service Act was meant to replace the e-Commerce Directive from 2000.

More attacks on businesses and individuals

Whether you look at the number of cyber attacks, accounts exposed, or a variety of other statistics, it would have been hard to expect cybercrime to decrease. Not surprisingly, 2021 was expected to be another record-breaking year in cybercrime, with mobile malware playing a significant part. To make matters worse, criminals were likely to find new ways to use AI to attack systems.

Social media and global internet trends

There were four big predictions touching upon our social media and internet use. However, the general idea was that in 2021, the political divide would increase even further. We would lose the mainstream apps and switch to their more radical alternatives.

Furthermore, we would see more ideas on how to merge our real and digital lives, especially if quarantines and work-from-home trends continued throughout the year. Internet shutdowns were predicted to be a favorite toy for authoritarian leaders, and they were likely to learn how to use them more effectively.

Cybersecurity in 2021: What really happened?

Did elections get hacked in 2021? Have we really ditched mainstream social media platforms? While there were a lot of big predictions, a few missed the mark completely, but many more came true.

The pandemic would transform how we work

While different countries still had spikes in cases, globally we managed to avoid long lockdowns. Having said that, the pandemic impacted our daily lives and, as a result, companies had to adjust their security guidelines to accommodate employees working from home. Also, many people learned how to do their shopping online, which will impact the growing online scam industry even further.

Cybersecurity in politics would gain momentum

2021 was supposed to be a year for political change, attention towards Big Tech practices, and e-voting. And in many ways, it was. Countries discussed legislation regarding management of private data, and France even announced an agency to fight against the spread of fake news.

One prediction that did not come true was the EU’s adoption of the Digital Services Act. But the legislation is still viable and will probably be taken on this year. Similarly, countries that have announced internet voting plans are still in the process of doing so. But those that did have electronic voting smashed their records.

More detrimental attacks on businesses and individuals

2021 was another year of record-breaking cyber incidents, breaches, and leaks. Facebook suffered a data breach exposing data of over 533 million users, flaws in SolarWinds’ infrastructure revealed private data of thousands of companies and government agencies, and one of the largest ransomware attacks paralysed the Colonial Pipeline. And that’s just the first half of the year.

Last year, we also learned the extent of Pegasus, mobile spyware created by the NSO Group. Created to fight terrorism, the spyware was found on the smartphones of journalists, lawyers, and activists as well as the devices of their loved ones.

As always, new technologies are fantastic until they’re being used against civilians. This is the case with AI. It is both helping fight against cyber threats and used as a tool by hackers to either to hack or to find vulnerabilities, as was the case with Log4shell.

Social media and the global internet

After the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, it was easy to forsee a split of social media in 2021. Mainstream platforms became much more vigilant in fighting fake news, which was seen by some as silencing one side of the conversation. As a result, Donald Trump announced his own media project, while his supporters moved to Parler, the right-wing social media platform.

And then, January 6th happened. After the attack on the U.S. Capitol, cloud companies refused to work with Parler, and the company was forced to shut down. Needless to say, the attack on the U.S. Capitol shook almost everyone and, eventually, there was no mass exodus from the mainstream social media.

In 2021, Facebook announced its new name and a virtual-reality project for people to work and live online. While the idea of a metaverse controlled by Facebook's founder was met with skepticism and ridicule, there is a high probability we will start to see more metaverse projects.

As expected, authoritarian regimes further weaponized internet censorship against their own citizens. The number of shutdowns has not changed significantly between 2020 and 2021, but the number of affected people has risen by 80% to 486 million.

Cybersecurity trends in 2022: What to expect

What about 2022? The bad news is that unless we change something, we’ll see a lot of stories from 2021 repeat themselves. But there’s good news, too. Because 2021 was so bad with regards to cybersecurity, digital rights, privacy, and security are starting to get the attention they deserve.

Global movement against cyber threats

Foreigh hackers or trolls and their online activities have been harmful in a variety of ways. Now, we see countries push back. In May, U.S. President Biden signed an executive order to support the country's cybersecurity efforts, while later he urged tech companies to contribute and “do their part” for the cause. At the same time, European countries have strengthened their position to fight fake news. This year, we’ll see more of the same – new legislation and more accountability demanded from media companies.

Crypto will teach us valuable lessons

The 10-year history of cryptocurrency has already seen plenty of head-spinning scams. But crypto adoption is slowly moving mainstream. This means that crypto scams will become even more prevalent. Countries around the world will have to make some hard decisions on what to encourage, legislate, or outright ban. If we’re lucky, blockchain-based services will also open doors to better privacy and more opportunities to trade, work, and play.

Get ready for new types of cyber attacks

New types of cyber attacks are on the horizon – or rather, new ways to use old methods. Ransomware as a service (RaaS), fileless attacks, and supply chain attacks have all proved to be very effective. We’ve seen attacks against individuals and experienced attacks on public services like the Colonial Pipeline. The fact that hackers have only gotten bolder in the last few years means we’ll face even worse attacks in 2022.

Internet censorship will increase

Authoritarian regimes have been experimenting with misinformation, internet censorship, and shutdowns. Even democratic countries have used these methods against protesters. They know these methods work. In 2022, internet censorship and its effect on the global economy is likely to increase further.

Stay safe in 2022

In 2021, we’ve seen a shift in the way governments, companies, and people look at cybersecurity. That’s great, but the job is not done. From creating strong passwords to protecting company data, we’re still not taking many easy-to-solve solutions on board. Stay cautious about threats in your digital life, and let’s all make 2022 a year of positive outcomes.