Lumu Technologies continues to bet on business cybersecurity and presents its predictions for 2023. Is your company ready?

“This meeting has been an excellent opportunity to publicize the cybersecurity landscape in Latin America and how this should be a priority for companies. The objective of organizations will not only be to protect themselves with cutting-edge solutions, but also to support the work of cybersecurity teams so that they have less wear and tear and optimal management when it comes to detecting the level of commitment to which companies, workers and clients they are exposed continuously”, were some of the expressions of the Colombian Ricardo Villadiego, founder and CEO of Lumu Technologies, on January 13 in the city of Bogotá during Latam Media Day 2023.

Villadiego highlighted the importance that companies must have in adopting security to avoid breaches that attack their network and data systems. “Cybercrime forces all organizations, regardless of their size, to implement cybersecurity efficiently. It is an obligation, just as they have to pay for basic services, pay for licenses… they have no other option than to pay for a cybersecurity system, otherwise, the possibility of suffering a cyberattack is very high. Current technologies were not designed to face a cyberattack, hence thinking that you are protected from today to the future is impossible because attacks evolve infinitely. On many occasions, the attacker enters a system and the company does not realize it, except when the damage and infiltration are evident. When we reviewed the forensic reports, we realized that the adversary was there for three to six months. Imagine having a stranger living in his house during that time and you weren’t aware of it. In cybersecurity this is very common, that is, having attackers who have access to technological and information resources within companies”.

What does Lumu predict for this year?

”The cybersecurity landscape tends to evolve rapidly and 2023 will prove especially volatile. To overcome this instability, it will be necessary to have fast and accurate information at your fingertips, both about what is happening within your network infrastructure and in the cybersecurity sector”, highlights Germán Patiño, vice president of sales for Latin America at Lumu Technologies.

• The economic crisis will boost the creativity of cybercriminals: As economies decline, the number of people turning to cybercrime as a source of income increases. This will drive further diversification and creativity in the cybercrime sector. Cybercriminals will find new vectors and attack new targets, including smaller businesses. Organizations that delay their defense projects will be at greater risk.
• The interconnectivity of APIs will be harnessed in a multi-billion dollar cyberattack: The world is increasingly interconnected, and applications are the ties that bind us. Each of these connections creates a risk and represents a new means of attack. Criminals will take advantage of these interfaces to distribute downloads in an unprecedented breach of the supply chain.
• A major attack on critical infrastructure will disrupt vital services: The Colonial pipeline attack of 2021 was but an appetizer compared to what threat actors can do. Despite a concerted federal deployment to bolster the cyber readiness of critical infrastructure, we are about to experience ‘the great attack’. It is possible that in 2023 a cyberattack will interrupt access to water, electricity, gas or the Internet.
• The courts will be in the crosshairs of cybercriminals: Federal justice is vulnerable and, therefore, susceptible to causing chaos. A cybercriminal attacking the courts will erase the records and throw the criminal justice system into disarray. Although it is possible that they act this way because of the chaos itself, it is more likely that they do it for ransom.

• The unions of the ransomware will avoid prosecution: Despite efforts to fend off data hijacking gangs, as was the case with the Australian government going after the Medibank breachers, none of the syndicates in this activity will face the consequences legal. Many of these types of gangs operate from countries with sympathetic governments, and are nearly impossible to locate and often easily dismantle their operations only to re-start under a new name. The authorities will not prioritize the problem of cybercrime for fear of becoming a target.
• Visibility and analytics become the two pillars for cybersecurity operations: NG-Siems and XDR cybersecurity applications will be too slow and complex to detect intrusions promptly and will not provide all the centralized data and cross-references that security teams need when a compromise has been detected. Organizations will realize that without visibility into their networks, they are completely lost. Unifying network visibility in real time will be essential if you don’t want to die trying.
• The empowerment of the cybersecurity operator: This sector will end up addressing the situation of general wear and tear on operators. This will require putting the information operators need at their fingertips, getting the entire stack on the same page, using automation where appropriate, and filtering out false positives. The trained operator will also enjoy greater input into the tools they want to use in their architecture.

• The limitations of EDR will become more apparent as evasion becomes the norm: Endpoint Detection and Response, an integrated, layered approach to network protection. endpoints, it will no longer be a ‘sophisticated technique’ and will become common behavior in a cyber attack. Its adoption will stagnate as the technology fails to deliver on its promises. The telemetry provided by the EDR is proving to be too limited and segregated, especially when compared to what can be gleaned from the network as a whole. Vendors who have simply added an X to their solution to rename it XDR will be exposed.
• ‘Zero’ trust will become the norm: Zero Trust is a long-accepted security strategy, supported by analysts and adopted at the enterprise level. Initiatives have already been seen at the government level to accelerate its adoption in small and medium-sized companies. In 2023, this adoption will become commonplace. Previous forecasts indicate that the Zero Trust market will grow to $79 billion by 2027; we anticipate that it will exceed the level of 100,000 million.
• The phishing will evolve to stay on top: Threat actors always target “the human element” and the phishing it will continue to be the most efficient way to gain initial access. Current variants include the smishingthe spear phishing and the whaling. The next generation of phishing will be more personalized and better at converting through machine learning augmentations: natural language processing, deepfakes and data mining.

other aspects

Some of its executives also explained several of the plans of the company founded in Colombia with headquarters in Miami (Florida) and creator of the Continuous Commitment Assessment model (it allows organizations to measure confirmed commitments in real time). This meeting also served to present key points for this year, here are two of them:

Latin America and its cybersecurity context: The Threat Intelligence team has detected that critical infrastructures and vital services have been increasingly affected. These, along with supply chains, the financial and healthcare sectors, are expected to be most at risk from threats such as ransomware.

Priority countries: The region is facing a reality in which all companies, regardless of their vertical or activity, must pay attention to the prevention of threats in the networks and equipment with which their customers interact.