Welcome to the end of the year Security Byte. Thanks for joining me as we wrap up 2023. In case you haven’t heard, we no longer need cybersecurity, we have AI to handle it all for us. Breaking news, cybersecurity still is critical in 2024, AI cannot do it all for us. That was fun for the 2.5 seconds that we could celebrate. Welcome back to reality. Let’s take a look back at 2023 and see what we predicted and wrote about for the year.
Predictions from 2023
My number one prediction was that Small businesses will continue to be targeted by cybercriminals, but there is no need to panic. You have the power to improve your cyber resilience and to reduce the risk to your small business! That may sound familiar to loyal readers. I predicted that for 2023 and it still rings true for this upcoming year!
What did we see
For starters we started to see the evolution of ransomware. When first on the scene, ransomware would find your data and encrypt it, whether on your computer or on your servers. It would try to spread computer to computer or computer to server. Once encrypted, the cybercriminal would demand a ransom in exchange for unlocking your data.
Cybercriminals realized many organizations just didn’t pay the ransom for one reason or another. Because of this, the attack now consisted of stealing your data prior to encrypting your data. The cybercriminal could now threaten to release your data if you chose to not pay the ransom.
We spoke often on social media and the importance of protecting your accounts and also recognizing malicious accounts, including those that are verified. We also wrote about user passwords and managing user accounts. Lastly, we also spoke quite a bit about AI and its role in threats and protecting our small businesses.
So that’s it folks, it’s the end of the year! Happy new year and see you all in 2024!
To learn more about cybersecurity threats, trends, and topics with a focus on small business, check out Small Business, Big Threat!