The era of COVID-19 has highlighted the role of cybersecurity in business planning and execution. The unique events of 2020 buttress the old saying – ‘the only constant is change’. Even with the production and uptake of vaccines post-2020, there is no doubt that individuals and organisations will embrace a new way of doing business.
The lessons from the pandemic stress the need for business organisations to be tough and dynamic in outlook, in order to meet the exigencies of the time. This is more evident in the dynamic world of cybersecurity as data is the new gold, and new threats come up daily. One key lesson moving forward from the pandemic is for organisations to adapt and reconfigure their cybersecurity processes to meet evolving trends. Without a doubt, trends are emerging and will continue to unfold over the next 12 months.
Security as a consumable service
It is expected that as IoT technology continues to evolve and more brands revert to direct-to-customer selling and relationships, social commerce will rise to the point where each person owns approximately three IoT devices. This scenario provides an expansive area for an attack in the form of connected devices, digital storefronts and engagement tools.
Without the right protocols and technologies in place, consumer-focused businesses will suffer higher risks of data breaches and loss. As organisations come to realise the importance of trust, privacy and security, they will have no other option than to prioritise product and platform security.
The evolved role of the CISO
The role of the CISO, which in the past has been viewed as lacklustre and impervious to change, has been transformed by cybersecurity to an essential fort for business success. The department has evolved from being a hindrance to being an enabler, with CISO positioned as a vital contributor to top management decisions.
INTELLIWORX values this new role, as our services are aimed at helping CISOs to integrate the objectives of cybersecurity risks with the wider organisation’s business goals for innovation and balance.
Smarter threat management
The gap between breach detection and response time is bound to gradually close up in the year ahead. As more IoT devices are deployed, instantaneous response time to breaches will become imperative. Using a self-driven car as an example, a successful hack while on the highway could have disastrous consequences. Automation and artificial intelligence need to be employed to quickly detect and remediate such high-risk situations.
While AI has served to detect threats, the response aspect is still in the developmental stages. With the relatively low number of organisations presently using AI for cyber threat response (18%), it is expected that AI will take up the slack or develop new protection mechanisms for the nascent technologies.
In future, more organisations will embrace AI in the form of security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) technologies to enable the collection of security data and alerts from different sources. SOAR facilitates the performance of incident analysis and triage while leveraging AI capabilities. This helps to define, organise and formulate standardised incident response activities in line with the workflow through connections to data sources and platforms.
A globalised security market
The cybersecurity scene has evolved from featuring a mix of specialised vendors to featuring compact bodies offering services on an international scale.
With the increasing frequency of network infiltration, clients are demanding a different mix of services: synergy and end-to-end encryption from expert technical hands with a well-coordinated security strategy. This is a move from deploying funds from variegated software purchases, towards smarter, better-synergised solutions – even if this favours global players who provide end-to-end security across geographical boundaries.
Innovation is the Future
With Covid19 bringing the importance of cybersecurity to the front burner as a business enabler, professionals in this field should evolve to contribute more to business strategy and innovation. With the appropriate innovations in place, organisations can face the future with confidence that their networks will not be infiltrated.
