How IT Will Prevail In The 2021 Cyber-Demic

By Justine Kurtz, Carbonite

While we can all rejoice that 2020 is over, cybersecurity experts agree we haven’t seen the last of the pandemic-related rise in cyberattacks. Throughout the last year, we’ve seen huge spikes in phishing, malicious domains, malware and more, and we don’t expect that to slow down. As employees around the world continue to work from home, 2021 is shaping up to be another year of record highs in terms of malicious online activity. 

What is the cyber-demic?

Cybercriminals have always been opportunistic, taking advantage of all possible avenues that disrupt businesses, steal data, trick end users, and more to turn a profit. As the threat reports Webroot produces each year have shown — not to mention the increasing number of major hacks in the headlines — threats keep evolving, and their growth is often exponential. That means even before the pandemic, cyberattacks and resulting data loss were already becoming a case of “when,” not “if.”

Still, the COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented surges in threat activity as cybercriminals capitalized on chaos and security gaps caused by the switch to WFH. Particularly by targeting vaccine production and distribution, COVID-19 trackers, videoconference applications, and other pandemic-related topics in their scams, criminals have upped the ante on what would have already been a record year; hence “cyber-demic.”