Most Worrisome Threats

CF: In terms of the threat landscape, what’s most worrisome in 2022?

JC: Obviously ransomware is a massive issue. It’s been a problem for years. It’s going to continue to be a problem, especially because it is targeting now more businesses. Consumer ransomware is there, but it’s very small just because the profit isn’t in it. I can’t leverage $1 million against grandma after I encrypted her files. So businesses big and small are going to have to deal with the ransomware threat in 2022. There’s also supply chain. As we saw with SolarWinds and Kaseya, software supply chains are concerning right now and they can be compromised and utilized in attacks. So that’s also going to be a challenge.

And then lastly, there’s the use of vulnerabilities and exploiting of vulnerabilities. We’re seeing more and more of this where they’re weaponizing those vulnerabilities much faster than ever before. So when when a newly disclosed vulnerability hits, especially in critical applications like Exchange or Office 365 or any of the ones that the businesses are utilizing, they’re going to weaponize it very fast and utilize it in an attack. So organizations are going to have to deal with that.

LM: From a partner side of the business, they really do have to understand where these threats reside so they can talk to their end customers. We’re doing a great job talking to the end customers, but our partners have to have that same knowledge-base language and lingo so that they can get through to their own customers. It’s not just a simple click on an email and it might do some damage. This is big. This is super pervasive and their customers have to recognize that they’re there. There are so many vulnerabilities and our partners really do have to understand where all of those vulnerabilities exist.