2020 was quite the year, to say the least. Since March, with the advent and snowballing worldwide impact of Covid-19, there has been a mass exodus to digital platforms in almost every industry and market. Putting digital first while managing a distributed remote workforce, corporations had to adapt their operating, business, sales, and marketing models faster than ever before.

This sudden paradigm shift a.k.a. “the new normal” left critical security vulnerabilities exposed and proved to be a field day for cybercriminals. Amidst all the disruptions, changes, and uncertainty, cyber threats of all sorts have exponentiated. Cyber rouges and legions of hackers have benefited from an incredibly fast-growing scope of vulnerabilities thanks to companies’ inescapable need to tap into digital resources and use new software as soon as possible.

2020 broke many unexpected records – among them cyber threats. In almost every sector we’ve seen an avalanche of cyber threats in every form and size: data leaks, fraud, fake news, physical threats, and more, targeting all aspects of the business. Darknet has become darker than you think, allowing criminals to network with each other in more efficient ways, putting them one step ahead of everyone else. In this chaos of a year, many companies have incurred tremendous costs to be able to identify culprits and minimize damages.

Pandora’s 2021 Box

Unless countries accelerate their vaccination efforts, remote work is here to stay for at least another year. As substantial infrastructure changes have come with work-from-home arrangements, in 2021 we’re likely to see major data breaches that originate from the technology individual employees use e.g. personal computers, software, IoT, smart devices, etc. in addition to those that originate from existing corporate assets.

In the next twelve months, cybercriminals will continue to feast on the situation. As we will all continue to spend more time in the digital world, our reliance on and use of online services and smart devices will grow. Many of us, at the individual level, won’t check where our data go. The sad truth is, many times even the creators of digital devices and services don’t check either. Many don’t or won’t manage and secure data as they should.

But even against the backdrop of legal frameworks and protections, corporate C-level is mostly alone in its fight. Attacks will become more sophisticated and try to hit where least expected. In this new reality, traditional corporate security approaches will hardly suffice to meet all the challenges – detect, analyze, and preemptively act on countless threats emanating from all corners of the web. Only the newest multilayered AI technologies will be able to protect corporates’ digital, physical, and brand assets.

In 2021, cybercriminals will continue to add increasingly sophisticated weapons to their arsenals. And most likely, they won’t be the only ones companies should protect themselves against. As 2020 so clearly showed, businesses can fall victim to natural or manmade disasters, pandemics, local or global disruptions, new logistical challenges, and other unanticipated events.

In this new year and beyond, AI will be the way to go to manage such complex and unexpected events, some of which might strike simultaneously and/or build on each other. An AI-powered preventive web intelligence platform can enable corporations to maintain focus in the midst of such chaos. It can help them to identify and monitor threats prior to occurring and assess risks to their local, global, physical, and digital assets and operations. Such an intelligence platform observes attackers, their plans, and methodologies, in order to generate real-time insights.

At Cobwebs, we have developed an AI-powered web intelligence platform that continuously tracks communication points across all corners of the darknet to discover malicious activity and intent, tracing them back to their original sources. As part of this platform, our Digital Risk Protection solution allows for the following capabilities: geofence-based facility monitoring, critical infrastructure protection, location threat monitoring, VIP travel security support and event monitoring, emergency response, situational awareness for crisis management, ongoing company/brand reputation analysis and monitoring, threat actor network analysis, M&A due diligence, and deep background checks for existing or new employees.

Cobwebs Digital Risk Protection allows Security Operations Centers, close protection teams, and local security staff to see a full panorama of threats including those that specifically target crucial locations, key digital assets, and employees. It offers big data coverage of all web layers, historical tracking of digital presence and connections, enhanced visualization of threats and digital risks, as well as automated real-time alerts.

Global corporations with large operations, critical infrastructure, complex supply chains, intellectual property, high-profile brand assets, and business events can greatly benefit from our solution.