Watchguard warns that in 2022 there will be state-sponsored attacks that are similar to NSO Group’s Pegasus. If they get uncovered, however, they get reverse-engineered and enter the cybercrime underworld.

Believe it or not, smartphone security is not as safe as we think it is. Authoritarian governments may force smartphone platform developers to create them, but actually, they are less safe and the criminals will be given a chance to find and easily exploit them.

According to experts, we will be witnesses to state-sponsored attacks into the hacking world and this will be the reason for many incidents that are about to happen on every platform.

It is a well-known fact that most platform vendors are watchful when it comes to such attacks. It can be said for sure that Apple is, if we judge from its recent commitment to “work tirelessly to protect our users from abusive state-sponsored actors like NSO Group.”

Initially, these designer exploits were developed to attack strategic targets but now these state-sponsored hacks are developed with limitless budgets and access to extensive resources unavailable even to platform developers. However, this means that there is no point for people to worry about being hit by such exploits.

Our digital devices contain huge information which makes our lives into data. Not only governments but also criminals are able to recognize the huge value of the kind of information smartphones carry.  WatchGuard’s latest survey warns:

“Unfortunately, like in the case of Stuxnet, when these more sophisticated threats leak, criminal organizations learn from them and copy the attack techniques. Next year, we believe we will see an increase in sophisticated cybercriminal mobile attacks due to the state-sponsored mobile attacks that have started to come to light.”

As the latest COVID variant may force us to work from home again, people must be educated on how to manage their personal data on social platforms and even on their personal devices. If you run a business, you should educate employees to become more discerning toward phishing attacks, given so many complex exploits begin with targeted phishing expeditions.

What we should be attentive to is the other big security predictions for 2022. For example, hackers will begin to attack satellites; we’ll see attempts made to abuse messaging platforms with phishing attacks; and we’ll see accelerating deployment of zero-trust security models, such as those now available to more than 1 million Apple Silicon Macs in use across the enterprise.

If you think that there are safe backdoors or invisible platforms, you are lying to yourself. You have to be careful in a world where technology has become an inseparable part of our lives.