What does cyber security look like in the future?

No one can predict the future of cybersecurity, but we can anticipate the ways in which economics, politics, privacy and technology might impact it.

Cybercrime is never far from the headlines, and with awareness of data security gaining momentum following the introduction of the GDPR, it’s important to consider what the future holds.

Home connectivity and the IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) significantly influences cybersecurity.

Our homes and offices are being filled with smart devices that use internet connectivity to provide digital assistance and convenient ways to undertake everyday tasks.

Unfortunately, this has turned us into endpoints and therefore potential conduits into a network for hackers.

The IoT is a huge ecosystem with a diverse set of components, and therefore often blurs the lines between personal and business data. Hindering innovation of this kind isn’t the way forward, and the data used by IoT devices must be protected.

Users want more functionality but without fear that their data is capable of being intercepted, which is why the continued enhancement of IoT security is vital.

A layered future

The future of cyber security is likely to be dynamic, and consisting of several layers:

• Data security. The first layer is where our data is evaluated and prioritised, making it one of the most coveted assets for individuals and businesses and therefore deserving of investment proportional to the value of the data.

• Application security. We use apps every day at both work and in our personal lives. They act as conduits for data, and will continue to demand secure coding practices and processing.

• Infrastructure security. This focuses on the hardware we use, and in order to benefit from evolving cyber security, it’ll be increasing important to embrace product enhancements and integrate them into operational infrastructures.

• Security processes. The final layer includes processes and policies that involve the use of data. As time moves on, there’s likely to be a focus on automation and simplification of processes to protect us from adversaries who depend on human trust.

Governance will dictate culture

Two-factor authentication and password policies are two examples of cyber security governance that shouldn’t be dictated by the culture of a business.

Instead, we need to look at the best governance for a particular company or industry and ensure it’s embedded into the culture. This can come from training and by embedding within business cultures the understanding that security is everyone’s responsibility.

Partners must be included

As the future of cyber security moves towards the aforementioned layered approach, it’s important for partners to work together.

By working closely with partners on cyber security, businesses can ensure system integrations share security controls in order to improve the overall security posture of an industry.

Cybersecurity will increasingly become a team effort. The goal for every business should be to develop and maintain good partner relations in order to ensure that their systems and networks are secure, rather than focusing on individual components.

Addressing a shortage of talent with machine learning

According to Cybersecurity Ventures, there’s likely to be a global shortfall of 3.5 million cyber security jobs by 2021.

This huge skills shortage can be addressed in part by allowing machine learning to enhance cyber security. The ability for software to react and respond based on an infrastructure’s baseline behaviour, means low level tasks can be left to the machines.

In turn, that will allow human resources to instead focus on the high level, high risk procedures and processes - an approach often referred to as ‘cognitive security’.

The future is our collective responsibility

If we’re prepared to deal with the rising threat of cybercrime as a community, cyber security solutions will benefit from a partner-based approach and security-first business culture.

In reality, cybercriminals can’t be stopped entirely, and no system will ever be bulletproof, but the more difficult and expensive it becomes for adversaries to gain access to data, the more likely they are to move on.