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Cybersecurity As We Know It Is About To Change

Forbes Technology Council

Founder and CEO at CYFIRMA, overseeing the business strategy, product roadmap, growth and expansion plan, and investor relationship.

Pundits across the world have set their sights on a post-pandemic future, arguing that a new normal is about to descend upon us. While I recognize much of what the future holds is ambiguous, I believe there is an area that will become our inevitable reality — continued cyberthreats as a result of rapid digitalization.

According to a report by the Australian Cybersecurity Growth Network (via Forbes), the global cybersecurity market is set to increase to $270 billion by 2026. This signals the priority boardrooms have placed on cyber risk management even as digital transformation takes place en masse.

To wrap their minds around the post-pandemic realities, business leaders and CISOs need to understand the cybersecurity impact of these strategic digital shifts. COVID-19 has become the catalyst to trigger change in the ways we manage and operate technology. Let me outline a few here.

Telecommuting Is The Only Way Of Working For Many

• Adoption of the virtual desktop will finally see an upswing: With teleworking likely to become the norm, virtual desktops could become the security baseline for IT teams to enforce data management standards. Virtual desktops emulate a computer system so that IT can control access as such adding input/output devices as well as software and applications. This could become an important control point when remote workers are operating outside the safety of a corporate network.

To meet the stringent criteria of regulatory and corporate compliance regarding data security, many companies will see the adoption of virtual desktops as the go-to solution.

• We will notice surge in adoption of decentralized cybersecurity: Traditional cybersecurity controls dictate a centralized approach where data is consolidated from different sources to perform analysis and investigation. With swift digitalization, security controls will shift to data sources, similar to the trend witnessed in IoT. We could start seeing a new wave of anti-virus, data loss protection, digital rights management, and endpoint-based firewalls and other security controls gain traction.

With millions of employees working from home, hackers’ focus has shifted from enterprise to remote working individuals. To handle the menace that exists in cyberspace, decentralized cybersecurity will rise where greater emphasis will be placed on data sources such as actual remote employees themselves.

• Rise in biometric way of authentication: User access controls have largely revolved around single or two-factor authentication. These methods rely on “something you know (username)” and “something you have (password).” Since they present employees as the weak link to start a technical exploit for hackers, we will continue to see cyberattacks directed toward individuals.

This means identity protection will be a top priority, and the best defense should involve building authentication systems that focus on “who you are.” This would require advanced biometric solutions such as fingerprint/thumbprint/handprint, retina, iris, voice and other facial recognition technologies.

New Processes Will Govern Our Way Of Work

• Global privacy regulation and policies will require a re-look: The current state of privacy regulations is designed around the enterprise network and building the proverbial wall to keep sensitive data out of prying eyes. With the remote working concept taking center stage, re-evaluation of these policies is needed to address the new cyberthreats.

From a risk management perspective, global privacy policies will need to encapsulate standard operating procedures regarding BYOD, GDPR compliance and state privacy laws.

Governance around companies and employees’ social media profiles would also have to be included, as these platforms are frequently trolled by hackers who carry out reconnaissance before launching a cyberattack.

• Cloud will become more important than ever before: The shift to cloud services offers employees, customers, suppliers and everyone else across the ecosystem a seamless and frictionless way to access data and applications. Remote access by various users would compound security challenges and present many new potential attack vectors.

In the post-pandemic world, IT resources could shift toward data, particularly keeping data secure across cloud platforms.

• Containerization technology will be extended beyond the enterprise network to include endpoints: IT architectures will extend containerization and zoning concepts to include not just systems but also people, roles and the level of sensitive data they possess. Containerization, thus, will be extended beyond enterprise networks to include endpoints such as remote worker machines and mobile devices.

This will facilitate cybersecurity teams to apply varied access controls and demarcate data storage to minimize the risk of cyber intrusion and data breach.

Technology And Tools Are Taking Over

Innovative technologies such as ML/AI and AR/VR will see greater adoption. As we have already witnessed, video conferencing applications will continue to rise as non-contact interactions surge.

Sectors such as retail, hospitality and manufacturing will layer their adoption of robotics with added AR/VR capabilities. By digitalizing previously labor-intensive processes, factory operators will enjoy improved efficiencies — but at stake will be cybersecurity if it was not integrated during the early stage of transformation.

Cybersecurity teams that are saddled with an events-based approach will be overly burdened with triages when a cyber breach occurs. By embracing an intelligence-driven approach, businesses can digitalize confidently with external threat intelligence as the guiding beacon.

And Let’s Not Forget People As Critical Cyber Defenders

Hackers’ technical exploits could flourish in the wake of this pandemic, and a digital ecosystem is the perfect playground for malevolent agendas. Social engineering techniques to trick untrained and unsuspecting employees, third parties and contractors into releasing confidential information or letting an intruder into a corporate network will also intensify accordingly.

Instead of seeing people as the weakest link, view them as your frontline defenders. Cybersecurity awareness training for people across the entire supply chain and ecosystem will prevail.

Hacker groups will rattle the cages of government and businesses as digitalization efforts escalate. Cybersecurity strategies will have to shift downline toward the remote worker, decentralized controls and enhanced policy measures. 


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