Google Cloud Cybersecurity Forecast 2024: A look at the cyber landscape in the year ahead

Cybersecurity professionals are often focused on the tasks right in front of them, be it detection, response, analysis, or research. Readiness is another big piece of the cybersecurity equation, and part of that means thinking ahead. By studying the trends we see today, we can be ready for the likeliest scenarios in the coming year.

Released today, the Google Cloud Cybersecurity Forecast 2024 report can help prepare security professionals and business leaders for the year ahead by providing forward-looking insights from cyber experts across Google Cloud, including our leaders and experts on the frontlines of the latest and largest attacks.

The report represents an intensive collaboration between numerous Google Cloud security teams, including Mandiant Intelligence, Mandiant Consulting, Chronicle Security Operations, Google Cloud’s Office of the CISO, and VirusTotal. These teams independently provided forward-looking insights in previous years, but the Google Cloud Cybersecurity Forecast 2024 report represents the first time we are all joining forces for this mission.

"The cybersecurity landscape is constantly evolving, sometimes in new and unexpected ways. Defenders, often with limited resources, have the monumental task of keeping up,” the report said. "The Google Cloud Cybersecurity Forecast 2024 report is our way of helping security professionals prepare for the certainties and uncertainties of the year ahead."

The report features a wide range of insights across the cybersecurity industry, including:

• The increasing use of AI to scale operations for attackers and defenders. While we anticipate that phishing and information theft operations will be more convincing thanks to AI tools, we expect response and analysis to be faster, too.
• Our frontline intelligence experts expect China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran to continue their espionage and cyber crime operations to achieve their geopolitical goals.
• Threat actors will rely even more on zero-day vulnerabilities, and target edge devices and virtualization software, as a way to evade detection.
• Attackers will depend more on cloud services to scale their operations, and attempt to exploit misconfigurations and identity weaknesses to move laterally across cloud environments.
• Hacktivism, phishing, information operations, and cyber crime will continue to influence and be influenced by ongoing global conflicts, and major events such as elections and the Summer Olympics.
• More use of older techniques that are not implemented or accounted for in modern detection systems.
• We expect malware authors to develop more software in programming languages such as Go, Rust, and Swift in part to stifle reverse engineering efforts.

Head over to our Google Cloud Cybersecurity Forecast 2024 page to obtain your copy of the detailed report. You can also register for our upcoming Google Cloud Cybersecurity Forecast 2024 webinar to hear about the year ahead directly from our security experts.

Craving even more forward-looking security content? Hear insights on 2024 from our security leaders, Charles Carmakal, Sandra Joyce, Sunil Potti, and Phil Venables, as they review a wide variety of topics, including AI, TTPs, attribution, nation-state activity, zero-day use, CISO and board considerations, geopolitics, and more.