No one saw the events of 2020 coming, or the overnight shift to working from home that not only had a massive impact on the threat landscape, but also saw a rise in the industrialisation of cybercriminal gangs.

In 2021, ransomware will increase in terms of escalation and the punitive nature of the groups behind these attacks, says Rick McElroy, principal cybersecurity strategist at VMware Carbon Black. “We will continue to see nation-state adversaries leveraging ransomware for purely destructive purposes, especially as a means to inflict kinetic damage in the real world.”