Analyzing current trends
Over time, hackers have proven to cybersecurity experts that they can be persistent, more creative, and increasingly sophisticated with their attacks. They have learned how to adapt to changes in the IT landscape so that they can continue to be effective when they launch attacks. Hacking techniques become more sophisticated each year, and it is therefore vital to maintain an up-to-date security posture, with a clear idea of likely attack trends to prepare for.
In the following illustration you will see an example of "the anatomy of a Cyber Attack". It displays how an threat actor can interfere with the user (victim), in this case via a zero day attack, which helps the threat actor to compromise the users password and leads to the theft of data via lateral movement.
Figure 1: Anatomy of a cyber attack
In the last few years, there has been an observed trend in terms of the preferred attacks and modes of execution. These include: