Cyber Security Predictions 2021: Experts' Responses

As we are about to charge into 2021, it’s time to ask: so what will happen next year with cybersecurity? We reached out to industry leaders and experts with diverse backgrounds to find out what is the most important ONE cybersecurity prediction for 2021, and below we are detailing the experts’ responses as we are receiving.

Experts Comments

January 05, 2021

Eric Mizell

VP of field engineering

Keyfactor

2020 saw rapid adoption of DevOps tools and practices. Automation and containerization became and continue to be critical for agility, repeatability and scale. As companies look towards 2021, security will be a major focus. Fear of security breaches and potential loss of customer trust will drive security best practices. This shift will take place earlier in the development process and we will see a larger focus on DevSecOps, meaning security will become a first class citizen as part of the

The impact of this change will streamline the SDLC as trusted digital certificates, code signing and identity management policies and processes will be fully automated. This will speed up innovation and time to market while reducing security related outages and breaches.

The impact of this change will require companies to tighten their security practices and policies. This will include cryptology training, awareness and new tooling for better discovery, risk assessment and risk remediation. DevOps and security teams will have to work closely together to automate certificate deployments, code signing and identity management to ensure repeatability and auditability.

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December 09, 2020

Benoit Grangé

Chief Technology Evangelist

OneSpan

Banks will invest in roles dedicated to enabling data-driven decision making. We will see a rise in the creation of specific and dedicated roles within banks, such as the chief data officer (CDO), who will be responsible for the execution and delivery of the data-driven strategy within the organization. Chief Data Officers will play a critical role in the next normal that follows, as there’s never been such a vital time for CDOs to provide banks with timely and accurate data. These data.....Read More

November 23, 2020

Steve Morgan

Founder of Cybersecurity Ventures and Editor-in-Chief at Cybercrime Magazine

Cybersecurity Ventures

GLOBAL CYBERCRIME If it were measured as a country, then cybercrime — which is predicted to inflict damages totaling $6 trillion USD globally in 2021 — would be the world’s third-largest economy after the U.S. and China. Cybersecurity Ventures expects global cybercrime costs to grow by 15 percent per year over the next five years, reaching $10.5 trillion USD annually by 2025, up from $3 trillion USD in 2015. This represents the greatest transfer of economic wealth in history, risks the incentives for innovation and investment, is exponentially larger than the more profitable than the global trade of all major illegal drugs combined. RANSOMWARE A 2017 report from Cybersecurity Ventures predicted ransomware damages would cost the world $5 billion in 2017, up from $325 million in 2015 — a 15X increase in just two years. The damages for 2018 were estimated at $8 billion, and for 2019 the figure rose to $11.5 billion. The latest forecast is for global ransomware damage costs to reach $20 billion by 2021 — which is 57X more than it was in 2015. We predict there will be a ransomware attack on businesses every 11 seconds by 2021, up from every 40 seconds in 2016. Read Less

December 01, 2020

Gaurav Banga

CEO and founder

Balbix

Due to 2020’s disruptions, the gap between cybersecurity-mature organizations and security unready organizations will widen significantly and become a major competitive disadvantage factor. Cybersecurity-mature companies are those that have made already made investments to prevent cyberattacks before they happen. On the other hand, security unready organizations have yet to implement proactive security controls and practices and as a result can only respond to breaches after they happen. In 2020, many security unready organizations pushed out critical projects to enhance cybersecurity posture visibility due to budget squeezes. The primary consequence of being on the wrong side of The Great InfoSec Divide is that it makes it more difficult to secure new customers and retain existing ones. Your customers worry if you can keep their data safe. At the macro-level, The Great InfoSec Divide will slow innovation, as startups and smaller faster innovating companies will struggle to gain customer trust. We will see the reemergence of the phrase “No one ever got fired from hiring Microsoft,” but for cybersecurity reasons. Read Less

December 14, 2020

Ed Martin

Director of Product Management

Secureworks

Extended Detection and Response, or XDR, is going to accelerate in 2021 as a breakthrough solution. Organizations of all sizes will count on it to simplify and unify their infrastructures and data into one security solution. As cyber threats evolve, the combination of technology integration and advanced analytics is required to enable security analysts to gain contextual visibility across the ecosystem for a more complete understanding of complex threats. Not only does this mean faster.....Read More

November 29, 2020

Joe Pettit

Director

Bora

Depending on the size of your organization a typical security team could be dealing with up to and over 130 tools! Why is that a problem you might ask? First up – we’re in the middle of pandemic. The economy is going to be impacted further over the coming year. Security Leaders will have more to do, with less budget. One solution is to do more with vendors that have a wider range of products and services. Secondly - if you do have over 130 tools, you have to ask yourself, “how are those tools being utilized?” Are you making the most of your expensive technology investments? Do you have the internal resources to invest to maximize the benefits of each solution? If the answer is no, focus on what is more important to you and your business. I’d recommend that security leaders sit down with their teams and look at what is being used, why they use them, and what isn’t needed. Look at creating an inventory of existing tools, then look at how those tools give you coverage across the business (you’ll see some serious overlap), look at your recent incidents – compile and categorize those before mapping your portfolio to those tools that you REALLY need. Read Less

November 26, 2020

Chris Hickman

Chief Security Officer

Keyfactor

New remote and distributed workforce use cases have forced leaders to expedite initiatives this year to meet unforeseen use cases. In navigating these use cases, cryptography has surfaced as a common theme that will ultimately define 2021 IT security trends. Many companies have started to address cryptography management in their environments but have yet to fully embrace crypto-agile best practices. From managing shortened digital certificate lifecycles and root CA expiration to mitigating.....Read More

November 20, 2020

Abhijit Ghosh

Co-founder and CEO

Confluera

In 2021, we will see more organizations continue to increase reliance on cloud computing, and thus need to employ new cybersecurity paradigms to better protect themselves in that environment. Because of this, in the new year, it is anticipated that organizations will rely on technologies such as XDR, which eliminate guesswork and instead deterministically combine individual findings with causal sequencing of all events across the infrastructure to understand the precise attack progression in.....Read More

December 10, 2020

Ofer Israeli

CEO & Founder

Illusive Networks

The “spray and pay” method of scattering ransomware all over the internet and hoping to hit paydirt through the numbers game has given way to highly targeted strains pointed at specific victims. Despite all the myriad solutions deployed by organizations to defend against cyberthreats, ransomware is increasing at a rapid rate. The fundamental weakness underpinning the rise of ransomware as attackers’ chosen tactic in the aftermath of the remote work explosion is cybersecurity’s overreliance on behavioral-based threat detection. With the continued reliance on remote and hybrid work situations, the “old normal” isn’t likely to return. All the baselines created with years of user activity patterns factored in to detect and flag anomalies went haywire in the first few months of 2020. Without a baseline to compare anomalies with, threat detection based on activity monitoring will continue to generate even more false positives than usual, leading to more wasted investigation time.  Boundaries will continue to be pushed. For example, the recent news of the election security issue with Iran, while it's a big deal, it didn’t shake the country. I think it didn’t really shake the country because, because we saw similar things in 2016. The essence here is just human psychology – the boundaries keep getting pushed. And then the next time something occurs that seems unheard of, a country is going to accept it and then when it occurs again, it's not that it's overlooked, but that it doesn't seem all that awful. I think we're going to see the stakes dramatically continue to grow. There is a lot that nation-state attackers can do, but they're not doing today. And somebody at some point is going to make that first motion. I think we're going to see a shift in what is perceived as acceptable or reasonable. Security savvy board members. From a company governance perspective, I do think we're going to start to see a trend of more security and technology savvy board members being added to the board of directors. It will be crucial, as security continues to be a huge risk for all companies, to have someone on the board who can grasp this, understand it and work with the management team to resolve any issues and help manage the risk. Active Defense will be top of mind. Our customers are proactively bringing up MITRE’s Shield framework with us, which is phenomenal as it was only released in August. We've just scratched the surface now, but I think that this framework is going to play a significant role. It's going to transition customers’ thinking to the perspective Illusive Networks has long been focused on: the understanding that proactive versus reactive defense is key. How do you add an active layer to your defense? I believe that's going to play a significant role in security strategies in 2021. Read Less

December 07, 2020

Jon Fielding

Managing Director EMEA

Apricorn

Cyber resilience is an organisation’s ability to prepare for, respond to and recover quickly from any digital disruption. We anticipate a marked rise in criminal attacks in 2021, as hackers take advantage of people continuing to work remotely – in particular ransomware, malware and phishing. Recognising that no business is immune, IT teams will shift focus to ensuring they have all their ducks in the row in the event of a breach. They’ll also prioritise planning to mitigate the impact of any future crisis that drives the workforce out of the office! We expect to see an increase in encryption, to protect data as it’s moved from office to home – mitigating risks such as targeting in the cloud – and keep information secure whatever’s happening around it. There will also be a rise in endpoint controls that enable employees to use their own devices safely. These measures give organisations the ability to demonstrate transparency and due diligence in the event of a breach. The use of secure, encrypted storage devices as a straightforward way of backing up data locally is likely to increase, supporting the ability to get up and running again fast. Read Less

November 27, 2020

Ryan Weeks

CISO

Datto

Healthcare organisations need to remain on red alert in 2021: Given the COVID-19 pandemic, it's no surprise that the healthcare industry has been a primary target for cybercriminals in 2020. Between highly desired intellectual property and the opportunity for major payouts, the incentive to exploit even the smallest of healthcare institutions, let alone larger networks, will remain a top priority for malicious actors in 2021. Specifically, ransomware will be the primary attack method because the consequences are higher for healthcare organisations that can’t risk downtime due to the critical services they provide for patients. It will be critical for hospitals and other healthcare organisations to evaluate their IT and security budgets ahead of the new year to ensure they’re able to implement advanced security and data management tools that allow them to effectively back up and secure networks while enabling business continuity efforts in 2021. Read Less

November 24, 2020

Dr. Zulfikar Ramzan

Chief Digital Officer

RSA Security

In 2021, we will see a significant uptick in edge computing infrastructures. With that growth, threat actors will begin to develop specific threats that target edge gateways and other edge computing environments. In line with this trend, the proliferation of IoT devices and the increasing pervasiveness of 5G networks will exacerbate the situation – resulting in attacks that have far more impact compared to those in the past.

December 09, 2020

Stuart Reed

UK Director

Orange Cyberdefense

There is no question that COVID-19 has had far reaching and long-lasting impacts on the way people do things, not least the way we work. Digital transformation has accelerated in many different ways and while that has been tremendously beneficial for keeping people connected and allowing business continuity, the spotlight has naturally fallen on the inevitable cybersecurity impacts. With high profile breaches, lawsuits and eye watering fines imposed for poor cyber hygiene this year alone, in 2021 more scrutiny can be expected on digital projects from a security perspective as organisations understandably want to avoid the unintended consequences of digitisation. It will be those with embedded cybersecurity that will likely flourish as organisations take stock of which digital initiatives they roll out to ensure their longer term commercial success. Read Less

November 23, 2020

Professor John Walker

Visiting Professor

NTU

The dark science of OSINT will start to be used as a proactive mechanism to predict the future potentials of attack vectors; and will see an increase in its use to locate the existence of the unknown unknowns which are lurking within a companies posture of unknown insecurity. The conventions of the approach to Cyber Security will thus see a move away from the over use of tick-box based governance and compliance, and will see the emergence of the back to basics Cyber Security Professional.....Read More

January 12, 2021

Mark Ruchie

CISO

Entrust

The year 2020 put security teams to the ultimate test as once in-person offices quickly transitioned fully remote, with many companies still working from home or in hybrid scenarios as the new normal. The move to remote work only accelerated what we’ve already seen in the cybersecurity space: new IT practices, such as IoT and cloud environments, are rapidly driving the adoption of cryptography-based solutions like public key infrastructure (PKI) to support identity, authentication, and encryption. This not only expands an organization's crypto footprint but also broadens the attack surface — highlighting the need for centralized guidance, governance, and tools to manage crypto and ensure better security practices.

According to Entrust’s 2020 PKI and IoT Trends survey, 47% of IT leaders say IoT is the most important trend driving the deployment of applications using PKI. At the same time, 71% of leaders struggle to understand where sensitive data resides within their organizations. As CISOs build out their strategies for 2021, they can’t underestimate the risks that come with implementing crypto-based solutions, including a lack of visibility and control over this infrastructure which often leads to business disruption.

Not all businesses have the expertise or internal resources available to establish or even assess an effective enterprise-wide strategy for crypto and PKI. Leveraging external resources and expertise will help organizations uncover hidden crypto, institute best practices to protect assets, and prepare for ever-changing regulations and new requirements. By focusing on building a “Cryptographic Center of Excellence” for their organizations in 2021, CISOs can take control of crypto and mitigate rising threats.

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January 05, 2021

Ellen Boehm

Senior Director of IoT Product Management

Keyfactor

This year, the proliferation of IoT and inherent security risks have become a larger focus for CIOs in enterprise. Security has always been a concern, but with a growing reliance on IoT for broader business operations - especially in our remotely connected world - keeping IoT secure is priority.

Expect to see the conversation focus on device production and what IoT device makers are doing to build security into devices at design and ensure security through the device lifecycle. First and

Expect to see the conversation focus on device production and what IoT device makers are doing to build security into devices at design and ensure security through the device lifecycle. First and foremost, cryptographic measures at design will be crucial to ensure secure software and firmware updates over time. Unique identities at design are critical for all personal and commercial IoT devices.

Technically speaking, modern IoT devices have constraints that prevent them from producing highly random keys. Devices rely on an assigned key, or digital identity, to protect them from exploit and allow controlled access and secure updates. IoT devices lack the power and compute resources necessary to handle random key generation - which means that countless life-critical and high risk devices (including connected vehicles, aircraft and medical devices) could be vulnerable to attacks and exploits.

Connected IoT devices – everything from diesel engines to medical devices – are developed in one location, manufactured in another, then shipped into untrusted networks for operation. Device manufacturers need to ask themselves how they can ensure that devices can be managed, updated and protected at all times in these untrusted and remote environments.

IoT manufacturers will also be looking to add more flexibility into their supply chain strategy but employing tools and technologies that give them options when it comes to where to produce products. This allows manufacturers to optimize production based on economic cycles and respond more quickly to the market needs. When it comes to IoT devices specifically, it’s essential that each device is produced with a unique, traceable identity, and that the root of trust is established securely, independent of the factory where the device is actually built.

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December 09, 2020

Michael Magrath

Director, Global Regulations & Standards

OneSpan

Digital identities and remote account openings will gain traction worldwide: Regulators in Hong Kong, Pakistan, Greece, Macedonia, Mexico, and Turkey approved remote bank account openings in 2020 – a clear indicator that even processes rooted in traditional face-to-face meetings in the branch are now going digital and touchless around the globe.

December 07, 2020

Jason Hart

CTO

Trustonic

Each year when the security world looks to predict what will be prevalent in the coming year, experts often get bogged down in the weeds instead of looking at the wider problem. We need to start looking at this from a different angle. Year on year businesses spend more money on trying to solve security issues. You can actually correlate the increase in spend with the increase in security breaches. Clearly, the more money you throw at the problem, does not actually solve it, and the amount you spend does not necessary increase the level of protection that any organisation has. So, what does that mean for businesses trying to solve their security woes? It’s a mindset shift – security is simply the cost of doing business. If we accept that trying to spend more on security will not reduce your security burden, and that security and privacy need to be default within the business process or of the product/offering you are creating, that’s the starting point. If we look at the common problems that businesses are facing, it’s always confidentiality, integrity, availability, accountability and auditability. These are the key aspects of security and need to be a pre-requisite. Bottom line for next year, as always, (1) more and more risks, (2) privacy will become even more of a priority, and (3) there will be increased pressure from consumers and businesses wanting their solutions to have the aforementioned key pillars of security baked in. Chucking money at the issues with new tools and security services won’t solve the problem and will just give a false sense of security. We need to go into 2021, baking in security from day one. Read Less

November 30, 2020

Alberto Pan

Chief Technical Officer

Denodo

The COVID pandemic has made evident the need to accelerate the delivery of useful and trusted data to business decision-makers. Conventional analytics architectures can take weeks or even months to react to new types of data requests in today's complex data environments. That is why many companies are turning to more agile data integration technologies, like data virtualisation, which can shorten these times drastically. In 2021, we will see how this trend is consolidated as a comprehensive data strategy. Many companies will implement data fabrics - an architectural pattern which prioritises agility in the delivery of trusted, real-time data to the business. In addition, AI technology will be further incorporated in data fabric architectures to automate steps such as data discovery, performance optimisation and workload management. This will further increase automation and agility by leveraging the maturity reached by AI technology in the last few years. Read Less

November 20, 2020

Patrick Harr

CEO

SlashNext

In 2021, we anticipate seeing explosive growth in the number and types of phishing attacks. Beyond the commonly understood phishing schemes perpetrated incorporate email, we’re seeing a dramatic increase in attacks across business collaboration platforms including Zoom, Skype, Teams, Box, Dropbox, and Slack. Mobile devices are particularly vulnerable; our SlashNext Threat Labs have seen a 600% increase in SMishing attacks in 2020 over 2019.

January 05, 2021

Chris Hickman

Chief Security Officer

Keyfactor

The continued rise of crypto-based exploits using code signing, SSH key and TLS certificates – Administrators often generate their own keys, rather than acquire them from a trusted authority, which raises misuse and visibility risks. SSH key, TLS certificate and code signing-based attacks are becoming more common and more frequent. While we’re also getting better at detecting these kinds of attacks, the trendline shows momentum and the implication of the risks they present, especially as these kinds of attacks can happen at all layers of the stack. Code signing and SSH keys are prevalent with most businesses having more then they need and no easy way to track where they live within the organization. At face value SSH keys seem harmless, but when they fall into nefarious hands, they offer attackers a backdoor to the network.

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January 05, 2021

Gordon MacKay

EVP and CTO

DigitalDefense, Inc.

With the advent of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, the IT field has seen several changes including more work from home, as well as many industries experiencing an economic downturn. Due largely to the pandemic, many organizations will continue to struggle to stay afloat, and will experience a reduction in security budgets across the board. As a result, key decision makers will either look to acquire cyber solutions which combine different technologies such as endpoint protection and threat and

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January 05, 2021

Mieng Lim

VP of Product Management

Digital Defense, Inc.

Significant increase in ransomware and specifically vaccine related ransomware. The global pandemic is still top of mind, affecting everyone in some way. With vaccines in the ready, there will be an increase in phishing and scams related to ‘getting priority’ for the vaccine with payment and, on the flip side, it presents a tempting target for counter programming from anti-vaxxers and others spreading misinformation and disinformation.

January 05, 2021

Tom DeSot

EVP

Digital Defense

In 2021, we are likely to see advances in penetration testing tools that will use artificial intelligence to automate tasks that were normally reserved for human operators. These advances could greatly enhance the efficiency and speed at which penetration tests are done and lower costs for the consumer since less full-time employees will be required to conduct a full-blown penetration test.

December 21, 2020

Paul Farrington

EMEA CTO

Veracode

If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that a business is only as agile as its infrastructure, proving how much we depend on cloud-native technologies. With infrastructure becoming increasingly immutable, I predict we’ll see the impact of this specifically as it relates to the rise of cloud-native technologies and infrastructure as code. Both of these trends offer major business benefits in terms of automation, cost, scale, and security.

As companies continue to outsource their infrastructure

As companies continue to outsource their infrastructure to third parties and pivot their focus to consuming services, they will need to focus less on the security of the operating system and runtime environment and more on the application layer. Furthermore, as infrastructure turns into code, the better "choke point" to scan for infrastructure vulnerabilities becomes the code rather than servers in production.

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December 09, 2020

Jim Van Dyke

CEO

Breach Clarity

2021 will be a year where several legacy solutions hit the wall and/or are out of service. Legacy solutions can’t meet their business requirements anymore, and companies will find these products are no longer supported as the need for digital transformation intensifies. This will drive demand for modern cloud-based IGA solutions to replace legacy products.

January 27, 2021

Chris Huggett

Senior Vice President, Europe & India Sales

Sungard AS

The cyber security landscape drastically changed in 2020, as the majority of UK&I employees headed home to work. Hackers looked to pounce on an increased number of access points inside our homes on less than ideal remote infrastructure security. We have more devices connected to networks at home and in workplaces than ever before, ranging from smart fridges to energy meters. Its likely many workforces will remain dispersed in 2021, so as the future of the modern working landscape continues to

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December 21, 2020

Max Locatelli

Regional Director Western Europe

Infoblox

The combination of COVID-19 and Brexit has created the perfect storm for data privacy issues in 2021. Cybercriminals are exploiting the vulnerabilities brought about by the pandemic, whilst Brexit will put a question mark over data sovereignty laws that is likely to linger well after the December 31st cut-off.

From a legal standpoint, organisations need to be especially cautious about where they’re holding their customer data and be ready to adapt once new regulations have been laid out.

From a legal standpoint, organisations need to be especially cautious about where they’re holding their customer data and be ready to adapt once new regulations have been laid out. When it comes to security, the new found chaos will mean investing in solutions that are going to protect data in network environments that are increasingly de-centralised by expanding security to the edge to accommodate the explosion of end-points outside the traditional security perimeter. Traditional firewalls and VPNs that protect the core network are no longer fit for purpose. Organisations need to be looking at SaaS-based DDI security solutions that extend visibility to all devices connected to the network to ensure security from anywhere in the world.

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December 21, 2020

Neil Correa

Cyber Strategist

Micro Focus

Resiliency will become the next mantra of security and risk management teams – being resilient when experiencing crisis situations and continuing to function even with reduced capacity, all while containing the situation, will be the new normal. ‘Assume breach’ has been the mantra of CISOs for a number of years, however, with the advancements in automation, machine learning and analytics, the ability to quickly detect, respond and recover from breaches will enable businesses to continue

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December 21, 2020

Jim Hietala

Vice President - Business Development & Security

The Open Group

In 2021, Zero Trust security architectures will be imperative for business enablement, allowing security leaders to take a more proactive approach to cybersecurity and make more meaningful decisions. Yet, despite the Covid-19 pandemic heightening the urgency to adopt a Zero Trust approach, many organizations are struggling to progress past the early stages of adoption.

A lack of interoperability, knowledge, skills and understanding in its value are key factors hindering the implementation of

A lack of interoperability, knowledge, skills and understanding in its value are key factors hindering the implementation of Zero Trust. In a lot of cases, security leaders are not communicating risk consistently and coherently with internal and external stakeholders. Many are also missing a harmonized reference model, which limits their ability to construct interoperable Zero Trust Architectures with support from multiple vendors.

Looking ahead, open standards will be key for security leaders to provide a unified definition – as well as much-needed clarity for the wider business – of Zero Trust architecture. The Open Group ZTA Working Group is currently developing a transparent and reliable Reference Model and Architecture to support security teams in their efforts to fully transition to Zero Trust. Existing standards such as Open FAIR™ also enable security decision makers to more accurately evaluate which risks are worthy of mitigation, enabling them to better assess actual cybersecurity risks in monetary terms and provide analysis of security control alternatives that business leaders will understand.

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December 21, 2020

Eric Rueda

Commercial Leader Software & Connectivity, EMEA

Eaton

All too often cybersecurity focuses on traditional IT security, with tips on how consumers can avoid falling victim to phishing scams or how businesses can secure critical applications from ransomware attacks. What is frequently missed is the lesser known, but equally as critical, issue of securing Operational Technology or OT.

Information Technology is typically focused on transferring and storing critical information whilst OT typically controls the physical world. OT networks support

Information Technology is typically focused on transferring and storing critical information whilst OT typically controls the physical world. OT networks support building infrastructure that operates key facility systems such as lights, elevators, access control and heating and cooling systems. Such building infrastructures are commonly found in the commercial and industrial segments as well as in data centres. As more operational equipment is becoming reliant on IT to function, organisations are becoming more exposed to cybersecurity threats.

Commonly we see cybersecurity relegated entirely to the IT team, however, as more technologies powering day-to-day operations of a business move online, many do not think they are exposed and have forgotten to secure their OT systems. This risks OT security falling between the cracks. Instead, it should be shared between IT and facilities managers.

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December 21, 2020

Matias Madou

Co-founder and CTO

Secure Code Warrior

I believe that in 2021 and beyond, CIOs must focus on training people, rather than an over-reliance on security tools. Scanning tools and the like have their place in a DevSecOps process, for example, but security at speed is made possible by producing secure code in the first place. It’s kind of a “humans vs. robots” approach - the human element is often left out, when in fact automation is not getting the job done. Headlines uncovering new data breaches every other day are evidence of that.

We must get to a point where developers - those who touch code most - are given the knowledge and tools to play a greater role in software security. Ideally, those tools are best placed in their workflow, getting closer to their day-to-day activities until security is second-nature.

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December 21, 2020

Fermin Serna

CISO

Citrix

Companies are rapidly moving to simplify and shift things to the cloud. And CISOs are adapting to secure the new environment. But five years from now, there will be something else. CISOs will become more agile in adapting to changes as technology evolves in 2021 and align closely with business leaders to provide a secure environment that fuels innovation and growth.

There are lessons to be learned today that can help shape a better tomorrow. Just like work, cyberattacks can happen anywhere,

There are lessons to be learned today that can help shape a better tomorrow. Just like work, cyberattacks can happen anywhere, anytime. And in order to successfully protect the systems and information people need to get things done, wherever they happen to be, security organisations need to become more intelligent and flexible. In doing so, they can create the secure environments needed to keep employees engaged and productive and fuel innovation and business growth.

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December 21, 2020

Rodney Joffe

SVP and Fellow

Neustar

This year, the threat of misinformation has reached a new state of maturity. In 2021, we can expect the issue to grow further, forcing organisations to become more vigilant and take greater levels of accountability.

Currently, the majority of malicious actors are still using misinformation for legacy cybersecurity activities. Next year, we will approach another phase of viral misinformation in the form of deep fake technology.

Worryingly, the development of deep fake technology is

Worryingly, the development of deep fake technology is approximately five years ahead of our ability to guard against it. Threatening to erode trust even further, 2021 will see the cybersecurity community working on a range of solutions and technologies to prevent and solve the problem of misinformation, fake domains and deep-fakes.

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December 21, 2020

Rory Duncan

Security Go To Market Leader UK

NTT Ltd

In the next year, we’ll see edge computing become more mainstream, which will in turn allow information to be processed closer to the source, with increased speed. With as many as 50 billion devices online in the future, all generating data, this capability will be crucial when it comes to effectively delivering the internet of things (IoT) and rolling out 5G connectivity.

“However, as edge computing becomes key to the success of organisations from the majority of industries, it will also

“However, as edge computing becomes key to the success of organisations from the majority of industries, it will also introduce new cybersecurity challenges. As such, it’s vital that businesses embed security in to all aspects of their technology estates – and this applies to applications and workloads running on-premises, in a public or private cloud, or at the edge. To prepare for the new era of computing, then, infrastructure will need to be inherently secure by design. Put simply, security should never be ‘bolted on’ as an afterthought.

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December 18, 2020

Casey Ellis

CTO and Founder

Bugcrowd

Governments are collectively realizing the scale and distributed nature of the threats they face in the cyber domain, as well as the league of good-faith hackers available to help them balance forces. When you're faced with an army of adversaries, an army of allies makes a lot of sense. Judging by the language used in the policies released in 2020, governments around the world (including the UK) are also leaning in to the benefit of transparency inherent to a well-run VDP to create confidence in their constituents (neighborhood watch for the internet). The added confidence, ease of explanation, and the fact that security research and incidental discovery of security issues happen whether there is an invitation or not is making this an increasingly easy decision for governments to make. Read Less

December 17, 2020

Russell Haworth

CEO

Nominet

This year saw governments across the world take on greater powers and responsibility for the cybersecurity of their citizens, which is a trend that I predict will become more prominent next year as the lines between cyber security and national defense become increasingly blurred. The recent establishment of a national cyber force and increased funding towards the UK's cyber defense is the beginning of a new era. Besides the arenas of land, sea, and air, cyber has been officially recognised as a new battleground. Warfare in cyberspace is of a fundamentally different nature and will require new tools and collaborations to combat aggressive nation-backed activity. “Decisive action is being taken by governments around the world to tackle cybercrime and much of this is already in collaboration with the security industry. This is a positive step, which may decrease the volume of nation-backed activity perpetrated by known APT groups. It would be too much to hope that attacks will cease but we might expect less disruptive techniques and more ‘stealth’ cyberattacks, utilising espionage techniques and bringing in a number of different tactics to execute an attack. It is in this area we must next look to evolve cyber defense and for that, we will need a multi-faceted, coordinated approach across government, industry, and society. Read Less

December 15, 2020

Bernd Greifeneder

CTO & Founder, Dynatrace

Dynatrace

In the coming year, we are likely to see an increase in application vulnerabilities being exploited by hackers, as security issues shift from infrastructure to application. Accelerated digitalization makes this issue worse, as traditional methods of vulnerability management simply aren't fit for a modern cloud-native world, where applications are becoming far more dynamic. The growing use of API-driven architectures, Kubernetes, microservices, and serverless computing accelerates development, as well as exposures. Scanning for vulnerabilities in pre-production is simply no longer good enough for these types of environments." Agile and continuous delivery methodologies have also added to the challenge. Staggered rollouts, A/B testing, Beta testing, blue-green deployments, rollbacks, and early access programs help to ensure smooth implementation and adoption of new software, but they also mean that organizations are often running multiple concurrent versions in production, losing oversight and leaving exposures if not scanned continuously in production. The use of Kubernetes also means that the orchestration of all this often crosses into production systems, which increases the risk that vulnerabilities could slip through and be exploited. In 2021, organizations will start to look for continuous observability and runtime application self-protection capabilities to address these challenges, by enabling their teams to manage and proactively resolve vulnerabilities more effectively in both production and preproduction environments. Read Less

December 14, 2020

Mårten Mickos

CEO

HackerOne

In 5 years time, we will see the first hacker pass the $10 million in earnings mark. Even with increased competition, bounty prices continue to rise and more and more businesses will be offering programs. https://www.hackerone.com/blog/100-million-paid-one-billion-sight-hackers 2020 has already seen an explosion in collaboration tools that offer remote experiences. However, with such an immense opportunity for innovation, I expect that very soon we’ll look back on this as a very primitive time, in the way we now look back on the first web browsers from the 90s. In 5 years time, how will bots and AI be supporting us in basic tasks? Will we work on laptops at all or instead have digital rooms with fully interactive surfaces? COVID19 won’t be the last pandemic we’ll see and as a result, many of our recent habits will have become distasteful. For example, it will no longer be socially acceptable to fly around the world, so instead we will need to have those experiences digitally. Whatever happens, we’re going to need ethical hackers to help secure these advances in technology. Read Less

December 11, 2020

Hank Schless

Senior Manager, Security Solutions

Lookout

Directly integrating the shopping experience with WhatsApp makes it more convenient for the users to make purchases. But it also exposes both the shopper and the retailer to risk. The research community has consistently uncovered vulnerabilities within WhatsApp over the years that allow attackers to take control of data. There is risk to both your employees and the customers since there are consistent issues with WhatsApp vulnerabilities. If either device is running a vulnerable version of WhatsApp, that could expose both parties to risk. Threat actors could exploit WhatsApp vulnerabilities on personal consumer devices with the end goal of getting into a retailer’s infrastructure through this connection. As a messaging platform, WhatsApp creates opportunities for attackers to carry out phishing campaigns pretending to be retailer representatives or even a customer. Since WhatsApp and Facebook are connected, a threat actor has easy access to personal information of potential victims. This enables them to socially engineer a target and pose as a representative from a brand they frequently shop for. Attackers could try to phish login data from consumers or convince them to download a trojanized version of a brand’s app in order to steal data from their device directly. It could also go the other way, with attackers posing as customers to infiltrate a retailer’s infrastructure by engaging an employee. If your organization is going to implement this integration, be mindful of a few things: Ensure all your employees have the latest version of WhatsApp. To make this clear, implement a policy that requires them to update to the latest version of the app before they can use it. Protect employee devices from mobile phishing attacks. With everyone working remotely, you need mobile phishing protection that works regardless of where your workers are and can defend against phishing attempts on third party chat platforms, social media apps, and SMS. Make sure no customer data is being collected outside your corporate infrastructure in a way that could violate GDPR. Implement compliance-specific policies across your entire mobile fleet, especially if you allow employees to use their own devices for work." Read Less

December 11, 2020

Ellison Anne Williams

Founder and CEO

Enveil

Businesses embrace a technology-enabled path to privacy as a competitive differentiator. Shifting perceptions on privacy, the patchwork of regional compliance standards, as well as ongoing storylines such as Brexit and Privacy Shield have created a global regulatory landscape that is uncertain at best. Recognizing that broader clarity is unlikely to arrive in 2021, businesses will finally stop chasing regulations and embrace a more strategic and forward-thinking approach to privacy and compliance. Technical solutions, namely privacy-enhancing computation, will emerge as a foundational component of this approach, one that allows businesses to share and collaborate while respecting data privacy and regulatory barriers. This ability to perform business-enabling functions without increasing regulatory risk will give companies – especially those in highly regulated industries – a near-term market advantage as they are able to access and use third-party data in a manner not previously possible.” Read Less

December 11, 2020

Robert Prigge

CEO

Jumio

Addressing bias in AI algorithms will be a top priority causing guidelines to be rolled out for machine learning support of ethnicity for facial recognition. Enterprises are becoming increasingly concerned about demographic bias in AI algorithms (race, age, gender) and its effect on their brand and potential to raise legal issues. Evaluating how vendors address demographic bias will become a top priority when selecting identity proofing solutions in 2021. According to Gartner, more than 95% of RFPs for document-centric identity proofing (comparing a government-issued ID to a selfie) will contain clear requirements regarding minimising demographic bias by 2022, an increase from fewer than 15% today. Organisations will increasingly need to have clear answers to organisations who want to know how a vendor’s AI “black box” was built, where the data originated from, and how representative the training data is to the broader population being served. As organisations continue to adopt biometric-based facial recognition technology for identity verification, the industry must address the inherent bias in systems. The topic of AI, data and ethnicity is not new, but it must come to a head in 2021. According to researchers at MIT who analysed imagery datasets used to develop facial recognition technologies, 77% of images were male and 83% were white, signalling to one of the main reasons why systematic bias exists in facial recognition technology. In 2021, guidelines will be introduced to offset this systematic bias. Until that happens, organisations using facial recognition technology should be asking their technology providers how their algorithms are trained and ensure that their vendor is not training algorithms on purchased data sets. Read Less

December 11, 2020

Grady Summers

EVP Solutions and Technology

SailPoint

The remote workforce is putting organisations at a greater risk of data breaches, IP theft, and illegal access through company and personal devices. In the first six months of the pandemic, 48% of total UK knowledge workers said they had experienced targeted phishing emails, calls, or texts in a personal or professional capacity – this number will only continue to grow. If these risks are not addressed, 2021 will be yet another year where we say, “the threat landscape continues to become more complex”. Identity and access management plays a major role in securing enterprise identities and limiting the blast radius from a compromise. But IAM processes are complex, and a well-managed identity governance programme can thus be costly and out of reach for many organisations. Yet AI is already starting to change this, and the trend will accelerate in 2021. Identity management will become more streamlined as we analyse patterns and anomalies to automate access requests, spot risky users, and eliminate manual and cumbersome re-certification processes. Organisations will become more comfortable embracing automated governance around the real crown jewels in any organisation —their identities—and this automation will make IAM programmes more accessible to a broader range of organisations. I believe regulators will start to become comfortable with AI-driven decisions as they realise that machines will deliver smarter and faster results vs. overwhelmed humans trying to determine who can access what and when. Read Less

December 10, 2020

Adrian Moir

Senior Consultant of Product Management

Quest

In 2021, we’ll see the continuation of the shift from data centres to the collaborative cloud. The cloud enables simplified collaboration and is more accessible to a broader set of people within an organisation. However, alongside this shift, organisations will need to reassess how they secure and protect the data that no longer resides in a data centre. As we move forward protecting those cloud collaborative technologies will be just as important. Expect organisations to leverage the tools.....Read More

December 09, 2020

James Kretchmar

Vice President and CTO

Akamai Technologies Inc

As lockdowns and social distancing have forced people to stay indoors, Britain's Internet users are now spending more time online, including twice as much time watching subscription streaming services as compared with 2019. The Internet has coped remarkably well under this ever-increasing strain. But with more users making the transition from traditional broadcast to online viewing, and more content moving online at higher and higher levels of quality, the Internet will face even greater pressure. Technologies like 5G, while promising increased “last mile” bandwidth, will in fact add to the pressure by allowing users to demand more from the parts of the Internet that are constrained. To ensure the Internet continues to perform optimally, I expect we will see an increased need for delivering content from an intelligent edge platform. By delivering content to devices from nearby servers, the congested bottlenecks of the Internet are avoided, improving throughput and reliability for users. This will enable us to sustain the speed, quality and resiliency we have come to expect when we’re using the Internet, all while traffic continues to grow. Read Less

December 09, 2020

Mark Crichton

Senior Director

OneSpan

The year the cloud is finally embraced by financial services. In today’s turbulent economic climate, banks are looking to deliver secure online services at the lowest possible cost. And this is where SaaS solutions deliver the innovation needed in the most agile way possible. We will undoubtedly start to see banks make the shift to SaaS to remove overheads and refocus on evolving core services. Yet the financial sector is still behind the curve in its adoption of cloud due to its ongoing fear over privacy and data control to meet the stringent standards of GDPR and PSD2. As an industry, technology providers need to reassure banks and give them the confidence that it is possible to protect data anonymity and drive capabilities around areas including authentication, fraud, and risk analysis to help them reap the rewards SaaS solutions have to offer. Read Less

December 08, 2020

Rashid Ali

Enterprise Sales Manager UK & Nordics

Wallix

It is fair to say that 2020 was not the year we expected. But businesses across all industries have continued to push forward, accelerating their digital transformation plans and embracing new ways to work. It is an exciting moment for the industry, as we have moved away from talking about how to digitally transform and instead IT leaders are focusing on how to secure and manage the new working environments we have created, as we head into next year. Securing remote access and endpoint management needs to be top of the agenda. We are heading into a world where this is no longer ‘a-nice-to-have’ but should form part of any cybersecurity strategy. In addition, there has never been a better time to empower the dispersed workforce, in order to maintain productivity and business operations. Organisations need to invest in security, that will support remote users otherwise we could see businesses trading off security with innovation. Organisation that remain secure and agile, while supporting employees will be the ones that thrive. Read Less

December 08, 2020

Damien Riquet

Research Engineer

Vade Secure

Remote image-based threats will push email security filters to their limits Building on the success of image manipulation techniques to bypass email filters, hackers are now using remote images to store malicious textual content. Unlike images embedded in email, remote images must be fetched over a network. Detecting a remote image over a network is complex and time-consuming, and it cannot be done in real-time. While Computer Vision can analyze and extract relevant content from images.....Read More

December 08, 2020

Sébastien Goutal

Chief Science Officer

Vade Secure

Thread hijacking will grow A technique featured in the wave of Emotet malware attacks that began in July 2020, thread hijacking is a formidable email security threat that will grow in prominence. The technique consists of using existing email conversations with victims to spread to new victims. Using tools like Outlook Scraper, Emotet gangs obtain access to email threads on infected computers. Once inside hackers inject themselves into threads and ask recipients to click on a malicious link or open a weaponized Word document. Thread hijacking is highly successful for two reasons: First, because the malicious email is sent from a trusted sender (the user whose email is infected), and second, the context of the existing discussion lowers the guard of the targeted recipients. Additionally, we can expect to see an increase in other advanced techniques featured in Emotet campaigns, including techniques that bypass AV engines, such as VBA macro code obfuscation in Word documents. Read Less

December 01, 2020

Nicolas Fischbach

Global Chief Technology Officer

Forcepoint

As we got used to remote working, many companies gave up on protecting the perimeter and trusted in basic networking and cloud services to protect “the branch office of one”. In 2021 the consequences of these actions will come to light and we will start to realise exactly how much intellectual property was stolen by attackers and malicious insiders during 2020. Data visibility and the management of data protection is the most important cybersecurity imperative for enterprises in 2021, so that we can work securely, regardless of location. To achieve this goal, we must introduce real-time user activity monitoring. Cloud-native solutions with a deep understanding of users’ behaviour will deliver permanent solutions, rather than stopgaps. The accelerated digital transformation seen over the past year has pushed organisations forward, but also created new challenges for the cybersecurity industry. Security leaders must ask tough questions about whether they have the tools and solutions in place to spot and stop anomalous behaviour, before it’s too late. Understanding the emerging challenges and creating cybersecurity technologies which can address them, while also remaining ‘invisible’ to the end user and simple for the practitioner to implement, will be key to ensuring the ongoing security of people and data alike. Read Less

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