How to Tackle Cyberthreats in the Metaverse

The metaverse is a new reality and a platform that brings both opportunities and challenges. Today’s cybersecurity threats are likely to persist in this new era, presenting a multivalent and challenging threat landscape, which will in turn require robust and innovative security solutions.

To develop security solutions tailored to threats arising from metaverse ecosystems, organizations must work with their IT leaders, CISOs, and CIOs to continuously develop new security strategies and identify the current threat landscape.

Padraic O’Reilly, co-founder of risk management firm CyberSaint, says the metaverse could be exploited in similar ways that security leaders already see the internet being exploited, but in three dimensions, essentially.

This ranges from spoofing, phishing, and identity fraud to malware, ransomware, social media abuse, and watering hole attacks.

“Consider how many virtual storefronts or experiences could be spun up, how many new form-field entries, how many bad URLs there are,” he says. “Conceivably, if the metaverse is avatar-driven, there might even be a kind of kidnapping in play, or a kind of doppelgänger spawning; stealing identity takes on a whole new meaning, really.”

New Level of Anonymity

Cory Cline, senior cybersecurity consultant at nVisium, an application security provider, points out the metaverse offers a new level of anonymity to individuals interacting with each other.

“This is not a new i