As we near the end of 2022, the time has come to make resolutions for the upcoming start of the new year. It is also the time for predicting certain events, such as the status of cybersecurity for organizations of all shapes and sizes.
One prediction is stating the obvious: Organizations will be bolstering the effectiveness of their cybersecurity measures to account for an increase in ransomware attacks that negatively impact the defense, privacy, and security approaches for developing products and monitoring supply chain management.
According to Gartner analyst, Sam Olyaei, the strategies implemented for cybersecurity moving forward into 2023 must account for the rapidly changing complexity of digital attacks on organizations. “We’re falling into this old habit of trying to treat everything the same as we did in the past,” Olyaei said during a presentation at the Gartner IT Symposium/XPO™ 2021. “This simply cannot continue. We need to make sure that we are evolving our thinking, our philosophy, our program and our architecture.”
Cybersecurity measures are no longer decisions made by IT professionals working from secluded cubicles away from the rest of an organization’s team members. Preventing cyberattacks in the future requires participation from board-level executives to address the rapidly changing landscape of digital technology. Understanding the implications of the following six cybersecurity predictions for 2023 and beyond should help your organization take a proactive approach to address the ever-increasing risk of cyberattacks.
1) Expect Cybercriminals to Continue Attacks on Public Infrastructure
Although most of the focus on cybersecurity in the past has concerned private sector organizations, creating a collaborative environment between public and private sector organizations in 2023 and beyond is critical to preventing devastating public infrastructure attacks. Because of outdated public sector security measures, cybercriminals have turned their attention to attacking public sector computer systems.
Working with private sector organizations can enhance the protections built into public sector cybersecurity systems.
2) Privacy Issues Take Center Stage
You can expect the federal government, along with a vast majority of state governments, to enact laws that target cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Up until now, data privacy laws have addressed industry issues, with different types of legislation impacting different sectors of the economy. By understanding the gaps in cybersecurity initiatives, expect states to work closely together to fill the digital protection voids.
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which represented the first significant consumer digital privacy law, should become the paradigm for developing additional cybersecurity legislation at the state and federal levels.
3) Cybersecurity Becomes the Most Important Concern for Establishing Business Relationships
Many predictive models for cybersecurity agree that a growing number of organizations will make cybersecurity concerns the number one issue for determining the viability of forging new business relationships. This is expected to be especially true for data-sensitive industries such as banking and securities trading. Organizations should not only consider cybersecurity to be one of the most important factors in evaluating business relationships, but preventing cyberattacks will also become a primary issue for analyzing the continuation of business partnerships.
4) More Resources Devoted to Bouncing Back from Cyberattacks
According to a report issued by the World Economic Forum (WEF), around 95 percent of all cybersecurity threats emerge because of human error. Despite the advances in cybersecurity technology, the human element contributes to most cyberattacks. Because of the human component involved in digital exploitation, expect many organizations to devote more financial resources to developing plans to bounce back after cyberattacks.
Prevention will remain a top priority, but resilience after cyberattacks should become an important goal for organizations as well.
5) Changes in the Role of the CISO
For cybersecurity measures to at least maintain pace with the progress made by criminals, the future role of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) will change. The role of the CISO has already started to change, but expect rapid transformation to occur over the next five years. Fundamental to changing the role of the CISO is moving away from a strictly technical approach to addressing cybersecurity issues to incorporating more of a business mindset when making decisions that prevent cyberattacks.
More of a business approach means factoring in detailed cost-benefit analytics when deciding how to devote financial resources to prevent cyberattacks.
6) Commitment to Bridging the Technical Skills Gap
It is common sense to make cybersecurity issues the main concern for organizations. However, making cybersecurity issues a priority means nothing unless organizations develop the technical skills of the professionals responsible for implementing cybersecurity strategies. Expect organizations across all industries to make the commitment to train their IT professionals not only to address digital breaches, but also to possess the technical skills required to anticipate cyberattacks.
2023 Cybersecurity Predictions: The Bottom Line
Changes in technology happen at a much faster pace with each passing year. For cybersecurity plans moving forward in 2023 and beyond, IT professionals that include the leadership of organizations must stay at least one step ahead of cybercriminals to protect sensitive data and prevent substantial financial losses.
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