It’s that time of year again, where we sit down as a team and discuss what trends we expect to accelerate and what new ones will emerge in the next 12 months. What struck us this year as we narrowed down more than 50 predictions to our final eight was just how quickly the cybersecurity industry is changing. Threats and attackers are becoming more sophisticated and continue to wreak havoc on businesses in every size and industry, with no signs of deceleration.
While we can’t put everything that we think will happen in 2020 on this list, we have chosen a few that we think are particularly impactful. The predictions we chose focused on topics we believe are bold and timely, as well as rooted in the trends our customers and researchers saw take place this past year.
1. Industrial companies will continue to shift toward artificial intelligence solutions for analysis of cybersecurity data.
2. Companies will reach a critical mass of 5G devices in 2020, forcing them to reevaluate their risk paradigm for connected devices.
3. The federal government will continue to evolve mechanisms for evaluating the cyber postures of departments, agencies, and government contractors.
4. In 2020, disruptionware will increasingly intersect with connected systems and rogue devices in building automation and operational technology (OT) systems.
5. CISOs have increasingly assumed responsibility for securing OT networks. This trend will expand further in 2020 to impact more areas of the organization.
6. Hospitals will finally start to shift how they procure Internet of Things (IoT) medical devices in 2020.
7. As we saw with Windows XP, we will see at least one major attack in 2020 leveraging unpatched vulnerabilities in Windows 7, which will go end of life on January 14, 2020.
8. Financial services companies are accelerating their adoption of cloud technologies. While important in digital transformation strategies, there will be increasing security implications in 2020.
Conclusion
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. Companies in every industry will need to get ahead of emerging and growing technologies – like 5G, AI, and the cloud – and consider how their existing technologies may pose new threats in today’s cybersecurity landscape. To do that, they should reflect on how their existing tools fit these trends and others that might affect them in 2020 and, if needed, adapt strategically and consider new technologies that can help protect against an attack or limit its impact.
The good news is that, while all signs point to attackers growing stronger and more sophisticated, the cybersecurity industry is also becoming more robust. Innovation is at an all-time high and customers are the benefactors of that. Together, we can strategically tackle this challenge and emerge from 2020 stronger than ever.