Future Of Cyber Security: From Smac To Brisc

By Author: DMI Finance
Total Articles: 4
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By Manikant R Singh

Over the past few years technology spends and discussions by industries were only on Social, Mobility, Analytics & Cloud (SMAC). Many organisations were first movers and got benefited with these platforms. Investing in these technologies were very promising and gave enough investment returns.

Social helped social engagement, customer collaborations.
Mobility made customer centric data available anytime for mobile workforce
Analytics made predictions based on patterns.
Cloud gave organisations Reliability, High Availability, Scalability & Competitiveness.

Many nascent technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning & Virtual Reality acquired popularity and got its implementation. These technologies had few successes and many failures, as reported by enterprise technology leaders.

Fast forward to today, during this pandemic situation, many organizations have enabled work from home solution ensuring business as usual during the crisis. While many were prepared for this kind of situation it was not all the same for every organization.

When ...
... countries were declaring lock down every organization relied on IT and Cyber Security professionals to ensure business continuity during the pandemic. It was a great and bold decision by leaders who had to keep customers satisfied during this term, with little impact on the business. There was no respite for manufacturing and ecommerce companies while more and more technology companies ensured business continuity

Given the situation, the entire security posture which was designed for perimeter and multi-layered protection collapsed while redefining cyber security measures. Many businesses would adopt this WFH opportunity for cutting costs & improving productivity of employees.

There is no doubt that organizations are taking every method and technology to protect the organizational data while keeping the lights on. A global study says that there will be enormous cut in IT budgets, but I feel there will be more investments toward cyber security and optimization in technology costs.

The future of cyber security will revolve around Business Continuity (Backup), Remote Collaboration, Internet, Security & Cloud (BRISC). Although this might not follow any sequence it is for sure the sustainability of organisations will depend on the total of investment they do in tools and technologies. When this sudden lockdown was declared every Security-Leader had to ensure the following :

Business Continuity on untoward situations.
Remote Collaboration tools
Internet - last mile
Security
Cloud

While above are the big cheese which was nucleus of the problem statement, there was dozens of other solutions which were running and underlying the untold story. Few tools and technologies would be replaced with new ones in the coming years.

Business Continuity which gets tested periodically by majority of the organisations were never prepared for the worldwide lockdown and their cascading effects. Industries like ITES, Contact Centres and Customers Support centres got a big jolt and had to completely bypass many procedures and let loose their processes and live on as-is where basis.

Now following this the history will be re-written and every organisation will rigorously think about comprehensive Disaster Recovery, Backup and Business Resiliency solutions.

Remote working employees resorted to remote collaboration tools for video & audio calls. While many were not mature, the show had to be managed. The future looks bright for all-in-one, ease to use solutions which will get more secure and productive like geofenced, p2p encrypted and private rooms.

The remote deployment tools will also increase to ensure whitelisted applications will be patched besides the signature-based AV and Active Directory polices will get applied to the remote clients with reduced delay

Internet Last mile connectivity and infrastructure which is still a big roadblock for technology utilisation will get more focus and government may help telecom companies to upgrade the last mile and improve the speeds. Technologies like managed Wi-Fi over, SDWAN and State-wide Secure Wi-Fi will capture more market.

Security will be on the highest tide to ensure protection. Tools like Encryption, VPN, 2FA, MFA, EDR security, DLP, CASB, BYOD will engulf the market to protect the remote Work from Home users. The most practised Triade which ensures the CIA of data will take precedence. Identity and access management (IAM) will see a soaring demand.

Cloud will be undisputed, which was once looked as second priority will catch the priority list with no doubts. Private, Public & Hybrid clouds will see more penetration into all industries. More standards for effective monitoring will emerge to safeguard Cloud Technologies.

Artificial Intelligence will automate many Cloud workload and take the utilisation north and cost south. Challenges of shadow IT, misconfigurations on cloud will become a pain point for many corporate.

There will be no dearth for budget approvals as far as the business translates the lessons learnt from the crisis. Amid the rush from customers to define problems and vendors to resolve and provide solutions there would be plethora of new opportunities for start-ups, incubations to render Innovative, disruptive & low-cost solutions.

The author is CISO at DMI Finance

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETCIO.com does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETCIO.com shall not be responsible for any damage caused to any person/organisation directly or indirectly.