The Role of Cybersecurity in Accounting: Trends and Best Practices

In recent years, the world of cybersecurity has witnessed a number of noteworthy events, including the post-pandemic transition to remote work, the whistleblowing of a former social media executive, and the AI-driven ChatGPT phenomenon, among others.

Moris Media, the top digital marketing agency in India, has compiled the top security forecasts for 2023 to assist you in determining where you should exercise caution and where you can relax.

Ukraine-Russia war continues to have an impact: 

Experts predict that as the conflict in Europe enters its second year, economic uncertainty and even a moderate global recession will play a significant role in cyber warfare.

CISA recently issued a warning about an increase in attacks to capitalise on this societal discord and exhorted organizations to maintain heightened vigilance in response to this risk.

Since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in February 2022, the global hazard of cyberattacks has grown by 16%, as reported by a leading data analytics agency. Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act of 2022, which aims to "allow CISA to rapidly deploy resources and render assistance to victims suffering attacks, analyse incoming reporting across sectors to spot trends, and quickly share that information with network defenders to warn other potential victims," was signed into law by the Biden administration. However, experts believe the conflict in Europe will continue to negatively impact global cyber resilience.

RaaS continues to generate profits:

Experts believe that Ransomware intrusions will double in frequency in 2021 as ransomware continues to acquire prominence among threat actors. The days of hoodie-clad, basement-dwelling data miners are over. To all intents and purposes, suit-cladded hackers now run legitimate enterprises.

50% financial institutions encountered ransomware attacks in 2023, a huge growth of 60% over the preceding year. In the second quarter of 2022 alone, there were approximately 50 million data intrusions.

Experts anticipate an increase in assaults against legacy two-factor authentication and multifactor authentication, as well as innovative deception techniques and these ill-intended hackers will employ novel, unorthodox methods to earn a substantial profit. New extortion tactics and threats will be part of this year's push for more ransom payments.

Zero Trust has become the norm:

Zero Trust, which is a collection of concepts and ideas designed to minimize uncertainty in enforcing accurate, least privilege, could be the buzzword of 2023. Zero Trust adoption will continue to increase, and for good reason. Organisations with a Zero Trust approach have already saved nearly $1 million in average breach costs compared to those without the methodology. Furthermore, 80% of data breaches are the result of weak or reused passwords, but in a Zero Trust model, users are required to authenticate their identity when attempting to access data.

As the trend toward telecommuting gains momentum, some experts predict that the Zero Trust approach may even replace VPN. VPN’s do not have that much scalability needed to keep it protected from cyberattacks. Zero Trust comes with multiple tiers, is scalable and has much higher security.

 VPN is not being totally abandoned, but when we consider remote worker security, VPNs are not desirable. By 2023, sixty percent of enterprises will replace their remote access VPN with Zero Trust.

The lack of available talent is concerning:

 In 2023, executives anticipate that the dearth of available — and knowledgeable — cybersecurity professionals will be a challenge for businesses due to a global shortage of an estimated 3.5 million workers. In order to maintain a robust security posture, you must have personnel who are equipped to manage it." Experts feel that there could be an all-out conflict for cybersecurity talent, leaving companies unable to manage their own security requirements. The remedy is to educate current employees on how to correctly secure the cloud.

FinTech experts suggest that training current employees is a fantastic method to approach this issue because it is less expensive than leveraging compensation to attract talent and has the added benefit of keeping employees engaged. Employee retention will be higher in companies that are able to highlight the progress they can offer to their staff.

Remote working will continue: 

Remote work continues to expand at an exponential rate, and projections show no sign of a slowdown. More than 70 million U.S. employees are capable of working remotely, and only 2% of those who are capable of working remotely choose to work onsite. Industry experts are sceptical that the transition from in-office to at-home work affects the entire industry but this trend will continue to grow through 2023.

However, although working from home may be more convenient for employees, the increase in the use of personal devices to connect to work networks is concerning for security teams. Before the pandemic, when we were all office-based, it was straightforward for IT-based security agents to routinely check and upgrade company laptops and smartphones. In 2023, workers will be using more personal gadgets during remote working consequently developing newer challenges. Furthermore, with the rise of remote work, employees no longer get to know each other over the water cooler and are therefore more susceptible to impersonation schemes.

Experts predict that by 2023, remote employees will be significantly better educated on how to avoid social engineering assaults, how to keep their devices secure, and how to make recommended cybersecurity practices second nature.

All that matters is automation:

Data growth is outpacing the ability of cybersecurity teams to stay up. Manual processes that can take hours or even days are being replaced by refined, automated measures, and that as daily data quantities increase, automated monitoring of the cloud environment will also increase in frequency.

Machine learning algorithms can examine the vast amount of data moving across networks in real-time far more effectively than humans ever could, and they can learn to recognize patterns that indicate a threat.

In addition to relieving overburdened security personnel, automation and artificial intelligence result in significant cost savings. Organisations using automation to detect and respond to intrusions save an average of $3 million compared to those that don't, and AI enabled organisations detect and contain data breaches 27% more quickly.

What comes after 2023? 

Before 2023 ends, modern privacy laws will protect the personal information of three-fourths of the global population. In addition, by 2025, 40% of boards of directors will have a cybersecurity representative.

Nevertheless, their analysis also uncovered this alarming fact: By 2025, sixty percent of organizations will adopt Zero Trust as a starting point for security, but more than fifty percent will fail to realise the benefits. Organisations will need to prepare themselves for the future despite the lack of a crystal ball by delivering uncomplicated data security outcomes, making intelligent decisions about who needs access to data and who doesn't, and continuously minimizing your explosion radius without breaking the bank.