Anurag Kahol has published seven cyber security predictions in Security magazine:
- Cyber criminals will focus on remote workers. They have been taking advantage of unpreparedness due to the shift compelled by COVID-19. Even before the pandemic, 82% of companies had a "bring your own device" policy but 72% lacked or had inadequate BYOD security.
- VPNs are not a long term solution for remote work. They can hamper production and give employees too much access to resources. They are easier for criminals to exploit. Organizations are moving to zero trust network access, giving users the minimum permission needed to work. By 2023 it is estimated that 60% of organizations will be using zero trust.
- Spending on IT decreased in 2020, and this trend will continue. Security experts will look to technologies such as Secure Access Service Edge to integrate multiple services into one platform.
- Data breaches to healthcare organizations may be deadly. One fatality has been reported in Germany when hackers disabled a hospital's computer system with ransomware.
- Financial services organizations continue to be a high risk. Only 7% of breaches in 2019 occurred in this sector, but those breaches resulted in 62% of all leaked records. These companies need proactive data protection.
- Digital transformation has accelerated due to COVID-19. Existing trends to adopt 5G, artificial intelligence, machine learning and cloud use will be stepped up.
- The majority of the world's population is at risk of data breach. As of July 2020, 59% of the world's people - about 4.6 billion - actively used the Internet. 84% of organizations will support remote work even after stay at home orders are lifted. Better data protection is needed.