The ten challenges of cybersecurity in the next decade

Over the next decade, cybersecurity risks will become more difficult to assess and interpret due to the increasing complexity of the threat landscape, the adversary ecosystem and the expanding attack surface.

The European Cybersecurity Agency (ENISA), with the support of the European Commission, has just published its 8th annual report on the state of the cyber threat. Entitled ENISA Threat Landscape 2020 , it identifies and assesses the main cyberthreats for the period January 2019 to April 2020. The ETL 2020 report is comprehensive, partly strategic and partly technical, with relevant information for technical and non-technical readers. . It is divided into 22 sub-reports which deal with different aspects of the cyber year. 

Among the findings, ENISA confirms that the outbreak of the pandemic at the start of the year constitutes a new frontier between the old and the new in terms of cyber threats. “Due to the current Covid-19 pandemic, we are entering the decade with a new normal and profound changes in the physical world and cyberspace. With distancing or confinement, the public will tend to use the virtual space to communicate, build relationships and socialize. This new standard will introduce new challenges throughout the digital value chain and, in particular, in the cybersecurity sector ”, summarizes the report comptia security.

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This new situation will only add to the difficulty of protecting oneself, believes the European cybersecurity agency. With increasingly sophisticated, targeted and stealthy cyberattacks, assessing risk becomes a challenge. Indeed, with the increasing diversity and complexity of technologies, there are too many variables to take into account to make cyber risk management effective. Another aggravating factor is the sophistication of the tools, tactics, techniques and procedures used by cybercriminals to carry out their attacks. Malicious actors adapt and adjust them to their victim's environment as needed and collaborate with each other to achieve their goals.

This results in increased difficulty in putting in place an effective cyber risk governance strategy. Thus, defining a defensive position, assessing risk, managing data, applying relevant measures now pose more questions than they answer. “New approaches will be needed over the next decade to move away from silo analysis and move closer to a typical matrix of interconnected factors, variables and conditions,” the report explains. This poses a significant challenge for many organizations attempting to protect their infrastructure, operations, and data from adversaries who are well-resourced and equipped and increasingly trained in cybersecurity guerrilla warfare.