The State Of Cybersecurity In 2022

We enter 2022 with the highest cybersecurity risks we have ever had. I spoke to groups of CEOs last year on cybersecurity and opened with, “How many of you personally know a company that has been hit by ransomware that didn’t make the news?” Every hand went up every time.

Businesses have more things to protect than ever. PCs have to be secured, and so does every cloud service as well. Most businesses have more cloud services in use and un-secured than they know about. Employees use services on their own and put the confidential company and client information on them. The business is still on the hook when this information leaks.

China & Russia have both stepped up attacks against American businesses. It isn’t just the big guys, either. At JM Addington Technology Solutions, we routinely see attacks against small businesses, from 1 employee to 100.

The significant hacks against SolarWinds, Kaseya, and Log4j (aka Log4shell) have infiltrated deep enough into networks that the effects will be felt for years. The attacks against consumer devices, often on corporate networks, are way up. Thermostats, smart speakers, security cameras, light bulbs, smart TVs, NVRs, DVRs, old routers, and more all see attacks, which a hacker uses as a beachhead to get into the rest of the network. Very rarely are these separated from a secure network. In 2022 that cost of being in business will include the cost of cybersecurity.