A recent report by VMware Security Business Unit revealed how the cybersecurity landscape evolved throughout 2020 and how organizations are planning to combat these rising threats in 2021.

Indeed, it stated that ransomware attacks are getting increasingly more sophisticated, with almost 40% of respondents declaring double-extortion ransomware was the most used ransomware attack technique in 2020.

Yet, it highlighted that a growing number of attackers are fighting back. 63% of respondents stated that they witnessed counter incident response (IR) since the beginning of the pandemic. Besides, it was also noted that attackers are leveraging a number of counter IR techniques, including security tool disablement, DDoS (Denial-of-service) attacks, Security tool bypass, and Destruction of logs.

However, security teams are not getting more prepared and 81% of organizations have declared having adopted a proactive mindset.

Moreover, island hopping is becoming increasingly important, as attackers “hop” from one network to another along its supply chain.

Hence, in 2021, organizations are focusing on security for trusted third parties/supply chain, remote access security, network, and endpoint security, identity and access controls, hardware/physical device security.