Nations run on digital infrastructure. Fire-sale, from the Die-Hard movie reminds of the possibilities of terrorist or well-funded criminal attack which can paralyze not just a company but the entire nation’s critical infrastructure. In wake of current situation, CTOs need to focus on the major trends and better prepare for the coming 12 months. There is an uphill task at hand given 2017 was very eventful with number of prolific breaches across the world.
What the trends are saying
- The attacks are increasing at a rapid pace. Companies who were not attacked last year are likely to be on the list this year given the intensity, frequency and sophistication of attacks. Spear phishing attacks are especially the one’s companies really need to be prepared for, because if someone wants to get inside the systems, they will in a due course of time.
- Cloud security is coming as a new area for security as many companies have moved partially or completely on the cloud infrastructure. Gartner predicts about 25% of the identified attacks in an enterprise will involve IOT device by 2020.
- Machine learning and Artificial intelligence based products will become mainstream as analyzing the data will be very difficult given the sheer volume. Another major problem which CTOs need to prepare for crunch of talent to analyze the data or even understand the critical infrastructure of the company and device the right strategy as per the business needs. The is a dearth of good talent and training and retaining is a major challenge.
- The change in thought from protection to prevention is a welcome change. Globally CTOs are trying to use state-of-the-art technology to detect and remedy an adversary instead of just protection technology. The idea is, with ML and AI, it is now possible to detect a targeted attack and very few technologies can do this.
- Compliance is a major challenge but one of the most important task for CTOs in 2018. The government regulations to keep the data safe under guidelines will not only help create a better, stronger infrastructure but will also help in implementing best practices across industries.
With all the predictions and projections for 2018 and henceforth, the future looks like a long battle against the cyber criminals. Understanding of businesses and deploying the technology to keep it safe not just for the moment but also for something which might come as a surprise is challenging part of the work.