Cyber dangers are constantly evolving. Organizations need to be ready for an increase in cyberthreats given the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict and the anticipated economic uncertainties.
Top Gartner analysts recently spoke with VentureBeat to offer their most important cybersecurity forecasts for 2023.
Supply chain and geopolitical risk were expected to continue, DevSecOps would become a crucial methodology for security teams and developers, and human-operated ransomware would continue to be a significant threat.
1. Zero trust will be a critical component of risk management
According to Gartner, which describes it as “an architecture that replaces implicit trust with continuously assessed risk and trust levels based on identity and context that adapts to risk-optimize the security posture.” As a result, any request to use a ZTA resource must include a risk assessment, and trust must be explicit.
The risk estimate takes into account a number of signals, including device location, user assertion plausibility, device hygiene, threat intelligence, time of day, day of the week, and the application’s request’s data sensitivity.
2. Emerging architectural patterns will speed up security
“Security teams must be able to dynamically identify gaps resulting from either new IT strategies, such as moving to the cloud or increasing use of container technologies, or emerging threats, so that risks can be prioritized and addressed,” says security expert John McAfee.
“Big security vendors are developing unified cybersecurity systems known as cybersecurity mesh architectures, defined by their underlying data lake-oriented features” (CSMAs). With the use of integrated machine learning (ML), orchestration, and automation, as well as support for third-party integration, these solutions seek to build a single console.
“These platforms are built over time, [and] expand with new types of capabilities and integration as client needs arise. CSMAs will help organizations simplify the complexity of managing multiple point products.”
3. Geopolitical risk and supply chain will dominate cybersecurity
“A wide range of geopolitical risks continue to have an impact on enterprises globally, and many of them will become supply chain vulnerabilities in 2023. Partners and trustworthy third parties are impacted by the pandemic, social and political polarization, issues with digital ethics and privacy, and climate change.
“This increases the risk of malware assaults, attacks on cloud infrastructure, attacks on the availability and integrity of systems, such as distributed denial of service (DDoS), and data loss or theft for businesses and their supply chains.
“Effective security controls must be incorporated by organizations to address any supply chain hazards they may encounter. Cybersecurity concerns in the supply chain must be dealt with in 2023 as a socio-technical issue.
“These are not solely IT security risks, but rather they emerge from challenges such as hardware and software sourcing, business continuity and transportation problems.”
4. Automation of security operations (secops) will improve proactive and investigative capabilities
“Security operations automation is experiencing a renaissance. In fields like alert pipeline management (SIEM), threat intelligence (TI), ticketing and workflow (ITSM), and threat detection systems (XDR/TDIR), we are witnessing a shift from general purpose security automation platforms to objective-driven automation lead by specialized specialists.
Without in-depth understanding of the domain (problem area) and the subject matter expertise to design playbooks that yield benefits above the non-automated approach, even the most technically sophisticated automation platforms cannot achieve these aims.
“In 2023, security operations professionals should be judicious while looking for automation improvements for their program. Consider carefully how an independent SOAR vendor’s impartial freedom compares to the objective-specific information offered by a domain specialist as part of their core platform.
5. Business-critical DevSecOps will emerge
“The ongoing expansion and diversity of API and application deployments is expanding the attack surface for malicious actors.
“Therefore, organizations must view the secure creation and deployment of APIs and apps as a business imperative. Security must be automated into application delivery processes utilizing DevSecOps methodologies in order to accomplish this efficiently without slowing down velocity.
“The distinction between infrastructure and apps is blurred by DevSecOps. Considerations for application and data security go hand in hand with those for infrastructure security, as security teams will discover. The development pipeline, a crucial link in the supply chain for software, serves as a good illustration.
“Attackers are using flaws in this crucial component to access application components, sensitive data, and source code. For a comprehensive DevSecOps approach in 2023, security teams will increasingly align security and devops processes. Activities for developing software and automating processes must incorporate security.
