As we look toward 2024, I expect the cybersecurity landscape to evolve with new threats emerging alongside the advancement of Ai and Quantum technology. Here are my top 10 predictions for cybersecurity threats in 2024: 

1. Advanced Ransomware Tactics: I expect Ransomware attacks to become more sophisticated. Cybercriminals will easily leverage AI to enhance their targeting capabilities, making ransomware more personalized and harder to detect. Deep fakes, and ultra-convincing emails and telephone calls will evade detection and drive human behaviors to cooperate with privileged asset corruption and careless responses to threat vectors regardless of prior training. We will also see an increase in ‘Ransomware-as-a-Service’ models, enabling even less skilled attackers to launch devastating ransomware campaigns. 
2. AI-Driven Cyber Attacks: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a double-edged sword in cybersecurity. While it can improve security measures, it also provides cybercriminals with powerful tools. As I said, AI can be used to automate attacks, create more convincing phishing campaigns, and produce deepfakes for social engineering, so our best response is the embrace a form of Human Risk Management, where we monitor all employee behavior and interaction with security products throughout the enterprise and create risk scores for each. The employees with the most dangerous risk scores can be identified for specific training designed to mitigate those specific risks. Those risk scores can then be monitored to assure that progress is being made over time or that additional intercession is required. This trend represents a significant escalation in the complexity and potential impact of cyber-attacks. 
3. Remote Work Infrastructure Exploits: With the continuing trend of remote work, even at moderated varieties, the attack surface remains expanded. Hackers are expected to increasingly target remote work infrastructures, exploiting vulnerabilities in VPNs, cloud services, and remote desktop protocols. These attacks will lead to unauthorized access to sensitive corporate networks and data. The answer is still to eliminate the use of VPNs and patch vulnerable Microsoft products that enable RCE and use human risk management monitoring to gain visibility into the threats of future risks though behavior analysis. 
4. Supply Chain Cyber Attacks: I expect Supply chain attacks, where hackers target less secure elements in the supply chain to attack more secure targets, to continue rising. As the bad guys get better at compromising trusted third-party software and hardware, they will find new gateways to multiple victims at once. A serious part of hygiene must be third party provider audits of their own cybersecurity readiness, resilience and overall risk posture. Hard decisions will have to be made. Trust no one’s assessment but your own. 
5. Critical Infrastructure Targeting: Cyber-attacks on critical national infrastructures, such as energy grids, healthcare systems, waste-water treatment facilities and transportation networks, will increase. These attacks will be motivated by geopolitical conflicts and financial gain, but the potential to cause widespread disruption and harm is far greater in this attack class than others. Colonial Pipeline is a living example of what happens when a gas pipeline is taken down. Societal unrest in an election season is a classic example of cybersecurity psyops designed to divide a nation based on cognitive and information warfare and propaganda. We will see much more next year. 
6. IoT Device Vulnerabilities: As the number of connected IoT devices grows, so does their attractiveness as targets for cyber-attacks, and since we are the world’s moist connected nation, the U.S. is at the greatest risk and is most vulnerable to cyber-attack. Many of these devices have inadequate security features, making them easy targets for hackers looking to create large-scale botnets or gain access to networks. Our challenge is to scale our remedies when we are talking about 3-400 million users resistant to change and/or any interventionist style hygiene or required training or password policies.
7. Mobile Device Exploits: With the increasing reliance on mobile devices, attacks on these platforms are expected to rise substantially. This threat includes exploiting vulnerabilities in mobile operating systems, apps, and mobile-centric technologies like 5G. We know TikTok is an active threat, yet we do not cancel the app. We still use millions of Huawei parts in our telecom systems which are capable of and do consume IP and critical design knowledge about our communication systems, yet we seem incapable of an outright ban. 
8. Data Privacy Breaches: Personal data privacy breaches will also continue to rise. Companies will face sophisticated attacks aimed at stealing sensitive personal information, which will be used for identity theft, financial fraud, or sold on the dark web in the form of complete dossiers in order for criminals to establish full identities and go after complete lifestyles without detection. 
9. State-Sponsored Cyber Warfare: Cyber warfare activities sponsored by nation-states will increase. These activities include espionage, sabotage, and influence campaigns. The blurred lines between state actors and cybercriminals will lead to complex cyber conflicts with global implications. Combined with psyops campaigns designed to create hatred among tribes, the effect of the two together will be powerful. Hamas v. Israel is a classic case in point. 
10. Quantum Computing and Cryptography: As quantum computing advances, it poses a threat to current cryptographic standards. Quantum computers have the potential to break many of the cryptographic algorithms currently in use, leading to a potential ‘crypto apocalypse’. Organizations will need to start preparing for post-quantum cryptography to secure communications against this emerging threat. I only know of a few banks that are doing so. 
    

Final thoughts are that the cybersecurity landscape in 2024 is poised to be dynamic and very challenging, with a blend of technological advancements and sophisticated attack methodologies, along with an apparent lack of will to do anything to prevent or protect.  

Organizations who truly do care must be vigilant, continually update their security strategies, and invest in workforce training and all the existing advanced security solutions that mitigate these emerging risks, most of which are hygienic in nature.  

API security which is included in the first two predictions is a reminder that a category of threat is not the same as a threat vector. Malware must be included in every breach by definition and is therefore the single most dangerous threat of them all, but it is a weapon versus a vector. API vulnerabilities are like phishing attacks. Nothing happens until either is exploited. 

2024 could be the worst year ever in the history of our art, now that cybersecurity has become a critical component of organizational strategy and national security, while AI has emerged as the transformational, yet invisible enabler. 

Happy trails and good luck.