COVID-19 has impacted and fundamentally changed many ways in which we live and work, not the least of which has been its impact on business – including cyber attacks. As businesses grappled with managing remote work and enabling BYOD for employees, partners, and stakeholders without compromising on the security of sensitive business information, nearly 25% of organizations saw an increase in unanticipated costs to mitigate cyber security breaches and malware infections.

During the COVID-19 period of 2020, Fintech businesses saw nearly a 238% increase in cyber attacks. Tech Jury reports that companies faced an average of 22 security threats in 2020, with the cost of online crime expected to reach $6 trillion by 2021. Needless to say, cyber security is slated to remain a top concern for business viability through 2021 and beyond.

It will become a matter of viability strategy for businesses to become more proactive and offensive against outages, data loss, and cyber threats. With more and more full-time IT professionals losing jobs and the demand for defence against cyber threats increasing, businesses are likely to turn to security outsourcing experts for cybercrime prevention, cloud storage, colocation, data protection, connectivity tasks as well as end-to-end vulnerability management and threat scanning.

So, without further ado, here are our Top 10 Cybersecurity Trends to Watch Out For in 2021.

Top 10 Cybersecurity Trends to Watch Out For in 2021

AI Integration

Artificial intelligence (AI) is fast maturing as a wonderful compound of human ingenuity and machine learning. Ethical, intelligent and accountable use of AI can help businesses shore up against the rising tide of cyber security threats with dwindling skilled human resources to handle it. AI can help analyse massive amounts of data from both structured and unstructured sources in small enough timeframes to anticipate/ predict and prevent cyber attacks worldwide. The use of AI in cyber security is expected to grow to USD 38.2 billion by 2026 at a CAGR of 23.3%.

Distributed cloud

As edge computing gains ground in businesses out of sheer necessity for faster and more secure processing, so will the trend of distributed cloud that delivers public cloud services at or near the physical point-of-need. Hybrid cloud has never been able to fulfil the promises of public cloud entirely as it lacks all the capabilities of public cloud, such as, faster paced innovation. There is a reason why Gartner has named distributed cloud as the future of cloud.

In distributed cloud, public cloud providers serve the cloud options in different physical locations. In this way, businesses get to enjoy the best of both worlds – a cloud that’s maintained and updated regularly by the cloud service provider as well as low-latency, reduced data costs and privacy law compliance that can sometimes restrict the movement of data to specific geographical area.

Data privacy

Data privacy is likely to become a core component of compliance parameters soon – if not governed by a law/ regime such as the CCPA or GDPR. Businesses that understand their data processes well and can reflect this transparency to consumers and regulatory authorities will find themselves suitably ahead of a change that many are only starting to take notice of.

Hyper automation

With the rampant skill power shortage evident in Industry 4.0 as well as the need to process massive amounts of data very quickly for business processes, insights and more – companies will be increasingly reliant on maximizing automation potential. This will involve an integration of AI, machine learning, robotic process automation, task automation and more such tools. Businesses are starting to realize the impact of streamlined processes through automation and it is likely to shape processes and infrastructure to ensure operational efficiency and resilience for organizations.

Endpoint Management

With cyber attacks against enterprises on a tumultuous rise, endpoint management has become a critical area of attention. This is a particularly challenging prospect with a remote workforce using a plethora of devices to access sensitive business information. An endpoint management solution can prevent your vulnerable endpoints from turning into a node for an attacker. It can help businesses with not just managing and protecting endpoints, but also automating provisioning and compliance, and troubleshooting.

Zero Trust cybersecurity

With businesses increasingly becoming location-agnostic, ‘castle and moat’ security architectures no longer serve businesses as they once did. This forces security perimeters to hone in on person/ device identity for effective authentication and authorization. Zero Trust security implies policies that enable effective authentication through a granular and responsive approach based on centralized security policies.  

Rise of automotive hacking

With autonomous vehicles set to go mainstream in the near future, there is already a plethora of software that automates systems such as location assistance, airbags, and advanced driver assistance systems enabled through Bluetooth and WiFi. Both are vulnerable to a host of security risks and bugs that can be exploited by hackers. While companies are focused on complex algorithms to calculate the safe trajectories of autonomous vehicles, they also need to ensure the baseline connections and the overall system remains highly secure to prevent unauthorized access.

Location-agnostic operations

Location agnosticism is not just a trend, but is likely to shape businesses for a long time going forward as businesses become comfortable with remote project deliveries and the significant cost-savings that come with it. This model of operations will allow businesses to be accessed, delivered and enabled anywhere – irrespective of where its employees, customers or stakeholders are physically located.

As time progresses, we should expect to see unique value additions to this model of operations that offers a seamless, and highly scalable operations provided businesses have the right infrastructure, processes, management and security practices in place. 

What Your Business Can Do About It

ActiveCo is the industry-leading security solutions provider in Managed IT Services Vancouver. We offer IT Consulting in Vancouver for a wide array of businesses looking for advice on security issues and addressing vulnerabilities. Here are some of our basic recommendations for addressing and managing security threats.

• Invest in incident response testing
• Have a dedicated business continuity management specialist
• Pick the Right Managed IT Services Provider
• Build an emergency response team
• Support and promote employee education and training

The above are just guidelines we recommend for IT Security Vancouver. For a more detailed understanding of risk profiles and more for your business, give us a call today so we can set up an initial audit.