LAS VEGAS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Keyavi Data Corp., a cybersecurity trailblazer transforming the very nature of data protection, today released its top predictions for cybersecurity trends and threats shaping 2021.

Authored by Keyavi’s cyber threat and intelligence experts T.J. Minichillo and Celine Gravelines, this forecast outlines the highest-priority cybersecurity vulnerabilities facing businesses and governments this year as well as a new threat-detection capability to help them better understand and neutralize malicious attempts and intrusions:

• The network perimeter is now anywhere and everywhere data flows. As many organizations extend remote work for their employees while COVID-19 lingers, securing email gateways, web gateways and endpoints – and the endless river of data flowing through those channels – will be a major business priority and challenge to protect.
• Nation-state threat actors in China, Russia, North Korea and Iran are getting bolder and using more destructive attacks aimed at targets with the highest payoff potential or the most geopolitical gain. Data, the lifeblood of every organization, has become the high-value target of choice for these criminals.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are becoming the weapons of choice among cybercriminals for scamming, planting malware and committing fraud using deepfakes.
• Data epidemiology – a new arrow in the hack-detection quiver – is bridging gaps in an organization’s understanding of its attack surface with tools that automatically collect and analyze large amounts of threat data and prioritize incident responses based on perceived threat levels.

“With remote workers stretching the limits of their organizations’ boundary-less network perimeters and bolder nation-state attacks to steal high-value data, the risks of a serious data breach have never been greater,” said T.J. Minichillo, Keyavi’s chief information security officer (CISO) and VP of cyber threat & intelligence. “The best defense? Shrinking a company’s attack surface, empowering data to protect itself wherever it travels and arming cybersecurity teams with deep data visibility and control to never lose sight of their organization’s crown jewels,” he added.

“Strong security always comes back to defense-in-depth – a multilayered approach to protecting data,” said Celine Gravelines, Keyavi’s director of professional services and cybersecurity analyst. “Given the severity and scope of the latest cyber attacks, we predict more companies and government agencies will re-architect their security and breach-prevention strategies toward a more data-centric approach in 2021.”

T.J is an internationally renowned expert in detecting and thwarting some of the world’s most significant cyber attacks around the world. He has held strategic intelligence roles in financial services, the military and energy, including global head of threat intelligence at both National Grid and Morgan Stanley, deputy director at Citigroup’s Cyber Intelligence Center, chief cyber intelligence officer at Merrill Lynch, and senior intelligence special agent at the U.S. Department of Defense. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Celine is a senior cybersecurity analyst specializing in security research. Her expertise includes policy development, incident response, data classification, security metrics and threat intelligence. Follow her on LinkedIn.

Learn more from T.J. and Celine about how to reduce your attack surface on Keyavi’s blog at www.keyavidata.com/blog/.

Note to Editors: T.J. Minichillo and Celine Gravelines are “go-to” resources for journalists on a range of cybersecurity topics such as cyber crime; breach intrusion detection, surveillance and prevention; phishing and ransomware defense; endpoint security; and self-protecting data. To arrange an interview, contact Audra Capas, VP of Corporate Communications: pr@keyavidata.com (702) 551-2301

About Keyavi Data Corp.

Headquartered in Las Vegas, Keyavi Data’s transformative cybersecurity technology makes any type of data self-protecting by infusing multi-layered protections into the actual data itself. This innovative technology – now available as an API, client software product, mobile apps and web client – makes data intelligent and self-aware of where it is, who has it and what device it is on to determine whether it is authorized by its owner to allow access.

Under development for over a decade before launching in 2020, this game-changing cybersecurity technology has been awarded 16 U.S. patents thus far and is compliant with FIPS-140-2 for NIST. For companies and government entities that need to control confidential and intellectual property from accidental loss or a cyber attack, Keyavi’s easy-to-use yet robust security delivers the ultimate peace of mind. In today’s growing locations of disparate workforces and partner ecosystems, Keyavi plays a critical role in making data leaks and breaches irrelevant. Follow Keyavi on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.