Forescout’s 2020 Cybersecurity Predictions
It’s that time of year again, where we sit down as a team at Forescout and discuss what trends we expect to accelerate and what new ones will emerge in the next 12 months.
This year felt more difficult than usual to pick out the trends that will matter in the year to come. The world of cybersecurity has accelerated, both in terms of the sophistication of the threats and the technologies created to address them. And there are no signs of deceleration in 2020 and beyond.
We narrowed down the more than 50 predictions we came up with to our final eight. We chose trends across a variety of industries because cybersecurity challenges are affecting every type of company. For instance, cybersecurity threats are forcing healthcare companies to change how they buy and manufacturing and industrial companies to rethink how they are connecting their OT networks as they look to achieve greater efficiencies. What’s more, emerging and growing technologies – like 5G, artificial intelligence, and the cloud – will also affect companies in every industry as adoption continues to rise.
Our process for narrowing down the predictions focused on those that were timely and rooted in fact. We did not want to sensationalize and generate fear, but rather present predictions that were rational, constructive, and actionable. There are obviously many trends that will evolve and change in 2020, but these final eight we felt best fit these criteria.
With that said, many of the trends around cybersecurity for 2020 are concerning. Ransomware continues to rise and threaten organizations in government and healthcare, as well as increasingly target critical infrastructure networks. On top of that, multiple major worldwide events in 2020 could pose further targets for attack.
What these trends all have in common is that they will require companies to be more strategic when it comes to advancing their security controls in 2020. They will need to get ahead of up-and-coming technologies – like 5G, AI, and cloud – as they become even more mainstream. And they will need to consider existing technologies that may pose new vectors of attack, like critical infrastructure or Windows 7 devices.
Take a look through what trends we are predicting for 2020. As you read them, remember that we are all in this together with a common goal: to strategically protect our companies from attackers. At Forescout, we are here to help, aligned with our industry and technology partners. Read our cyber predictions here.