Beware of cyber threats to be witnessed in 2022

In 2021, we saw a dangerous increase in ransomware attacks, causing devastating compromises to government organizations, critical infrastructure, and businesses. The sophistication and scale of cyber-attacks will continue to break records and we can expect a huge increase in the number of ransomware and mobile attacks. The year 2021 being one of the worst years for cybercrime - and 2022 is expected to be even worse. The year 2022, Ransomware will successfully hit a cloud service provider that houses business systems. They will lock up both the backup and the operations making it very hard not to pay the ransom. We saw how the AWS outages last month were able to cripple businesses, and we can be sure that bad actors took notice as well.

In 2022, cyber operatives will successfully hit a mid-market financial institution -- and in their wake, they will disclose that they stole a significant amount of money. When the disclosure is public, AI-powered chatbots, mimicking human behaviours on social media, will create global sentiment issues about the stability of banks by posting misinformation online and sharing news stories that appear legitimate. In 2022, we can expect to see an increase in similar cryptocurrency related incidents and attacks, because of this, market models -- powered by artificial intelligence that surfs the Web looking for leading indicators -- quickly become overwhelmed with the negative press and process "sell" orders for the financial sector writ large, causing people to panic and withdraw funds and/or flood the system with requests causing a mini Black Swan event.

Secondly, Extended Reality (XR) will experience its first major hack. In 2022, we will begin to see XR -- which includes AR, VR and MR -- used to conduct global gatherings without travel, hug the sick and the lonely remotely, train children in a way that's more emotionally supportive while remote, and more. XR thrives on collecting every detail about you to ensure it can deliver a superior experience. XR surpasses AI mining your digital tracks; it also records your emotional reactions as you interact with XR.

The combination of detailed and personal data mixed with your unique emotions to an experience is valuable to 3rd party marketers, employers, potential life mates, and yes to cyber operatives with nefarious intent and the Nation States. Taking the fake news threat to a whole new level, criminals will increasingly use deepfake social engineering attacks, which leverage artificial intelligence to create videos and images of fake events, to access sensitive data.

Finally, in 2021, artificial intelligence programs trained by cyber operatives will look for trending topics, social media sentiments, and news headlines. The AI programs will write social media posts, news articles, blog posts and more. Using algorithms to monitor effectiveness and engagement, AI will launch misinformation campaigns designed to promote or attack a trending topic or hashtag without human intervention.

Deepak Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA