As the world moves towards an increasingly digital landscape, cybersecurity has become an ever-more pressing concern. The year 2022 saw the global average total breach cost exceed $4.35 million, and nearly two-thirds of organizations experienced more than one breach. As a result, Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) around the world are adopting various security strategies in 2023 that revolve around a human-centered approach to risk management. Here are some trends to watch out for in the world of cybersecurity this year.
The first trend is the acceleration of burnout caused by role consolidation. Economic shifts and the global recession have forced companies to adapt, resulting in workforce reductions and restructuring. With an ever-increasing threat landscape, cyber-security teams, including security operations teams, are overwhelmed with work. Furthermore, resource consolidation leads to personnel wearing multiple hats, which contributes to accelerated burnout.
The second trend involves the modernization of enterprise applications to meet the needs of millennials, who expect consistent forms of interaction that they are used to with consumer-centric apps. As a result, product requirements are evolving, such as making enterprise applications available on the mobile platform, supporting interaction with these applications using voice and text, and embedding capabilities such as virtual assistants. However, traditional access is still a necessity, including GUI and console access, making it crucial to bridge the divide between the old and new generations.
The third trend is the rise of Generative AI, which includes technologies such as Deepfake detection, text-to-speech conversion across multiple languages, audio transcription, personalized support chatbots, and more. The ever-popular ChatGPT, Midjourney, and others have further accelerated this trend. Users can interact with an AI bi-directionally in an advanced form of Generative AI. When applied to cybersecurity, an analyst asks a question about a threat; AI can answer this question and look for similar threats and help resolve them.
Empowering the millennial workforce in cybersecurity will be crucial to the success of CISOs in these challenging times. While security evolution coupled with technological advancement can help make cybersecurity very accessible, these advancements also open a new class of ‘non-technical’ cyber attackers to take advantage of, e.g., the use of Generative AI to generate novel malware. Thus, caution is necessary.
Finally, various governing bodies, such as the NIST AI Risk Management framework and the EU’s AI Act, will help shape the success of AI. Personally, industry insiders are looking forward to relaying voice instructions to their mobile devices to assess their organization’s security posture against an emerging threat and create a response to it without lifting a finger.
According to Anurag Gurtu, Chief Product Officer of StrikeReady, “empowering the millennial workforce in cybersecurity will be crucial to the success of CISOs in these challenging times. While security evolution coupled with technological advancement can help make cybersecurity very accessible, this creates a cautionary tale as these advancements will open a new class of ‘non-technical’ cyber attackers to take advantage of, e.g., the use of Generative AI to generate novel malware. The various governing bodies, such as the NIST AI Risk Management framework and the EU’s AI Act, will help shape the success of AI. Personally, I’m looking forward to relaying voice instructions to my mobile device to assess my organization’s security posture against an emerging threat and create a response to it without lifting a finger.”
Anurag Gurtu is a cybersecurity veteran with over 18 years of experience in product management, marketing, go-to-market, professional services, and software development. For the past seven years, Gurtu has been deeply involved in various domains of AI, such as Natural Language Understanding/Generation and Machine Learning (Supervised/Unsupervised).
As cybersecurity continues to be a critical concern in 2023, companies, CISOs, and industry insiders must remain vigilant and keep an eye out for emerging trends and technologies or risk being left vulnerable.