Infostealers: A Growing Threat to Individuals and Corporations

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Infostealers are on the rise, with a 58% increase in infection attempts year-over-year.

These types of malware are designed to steal sensitive information, including login credentials, tokens, and VPN credentials, often from Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) setups. Infostealers can target both individuals and corporate networks, making them a significant threat to businesses looking to safeguard access to critical systems.

The rise of infostealers coincides with the decline of traditional botnets and banking malware. Infostealers can provide attackers with valuable credentials, creating a backdoor for further exploitation. Ninety percent of breached companies had corporate credentials leaked in a stealer log before the breach. This growing trend poses risks not only to corporate security but also to individual privacy and data protection.

Edge Device Vulnerabilities: A New Access Vector
Edge devices, such as IoT devices, wearables, and remote work hardware, have become prime targets for cyber criminals. Because they operate on the edge of a network, these devices can be less italy whatsapp number data secure and harder to monitor, making them an attractive entry point for attackers. The growth in edge devices as an attack vector underscores the need to secure all of your connected endpoints in order to prevent breaches.

In 2024, we also saw a marked increase in zero-day vulnerabilities affecting edge devices, opening the door for the potential that malicious actors may start exploit these weaknesses more in the future.

Cloud Security: Misconfigurations and Poor Practices
As organizations continue to build out their hybrid cloud infrastructure, the complexity of managing cloud configurations, maintaining compliance, and ensuring visibility across cloud assets has grown. Misconfigured cloud environments can expose sensitive data and provide an easy entry point for cyber criminals. Securing hybrid and multi-cloud environments has become paramount for all mid-size and Enterprise CISOs.

Threat actors now conduct large-scale credential stuffing and “low and slow” brute-force attacks on SSO providers and cloud services​. Attackers are also finding ways to exploit LLMs solutions.

API security remains a critical concern as well. Poor API security practices can expose cloud-based applications to unauthorized access, allowing attackers to steal data, disrupt services, or cause significant damage to cloud environments.

Looking Ahead: Threat Prevention Becomes More Important than Ever
The cyber security trends for 2025 make one thing clear: the digital landscape is becoming more complex and perilous by the day. And just as cyber defenses improve, cyber criminals and nation-state actors continue to evolve their strategies and tactics to evade these defenses.

Threat prevention continues to be the best defense against complex attack techniques, whether through email, edge device, hybrid cloud or through other attack methods.

As AI begins to be used for new and more complex attacks, ransomware operations become smaller and harder to identify and stop, and the growing threats from infostealers and compromised edge devices, a unified, and prevention-first cyber security strategy becomes critical to stopping cyber breaches.

As we look ahead, the key to staying secure will be a proactive approach to risk management, regular updates to cyber security protocols, and investment in the technologies that will help safeguard against these emerging threats. By understanding and responding to the latest attack trends organizations can begin to develop the strategies they need to stay protected from the next wave of advanced cyber threats.