Some of the biggest cyber threats in 2017 have been from insider mistakes and employee misuse. They can be just as big a risk as any outsider. Enterprises have to secure themselves against external cyber-threats such as viruses and from hackers.
Even then some businesses still have insufficient to no protection against cyber-attacks. For most organizations employees are the biggest threat to system security. And the fears appear to be justified. It may be mentioned that in the UK some employees have actually admitted to sharing confidential business information with competitors or new and previous employers. And it can take months or years before companies or organizations actually find out there has been an IT security breach.
A new trend is emerging in 2018 where data breaches will need to be reported within 72 hours. Organizations will be forced to adopt strategies to make speedy discovery of cybersecurity breaches.
Advancement in IT security will secure organizations with the right approach to help spot and mitigate potential attacks and breaches before they can happen within and from outside their premises.
Here are five security trends that will have a major impact on organizations against cyber-attacks in 2018.
Security Compliance will Become Necessary:
Data is everything. Customer data security is being revamped by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. NIST Special Publication 800-171, came into being on December 31, 2017, in the U.S. Its job is to protect Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) in non-governmental institutions and organizations. Over in Europe, the much anticipated General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe has been set up to make sure that organizations that handle European citizen’s information globally understand what data gathering they do, how and where it is stored and who will be responsible for that information. Moreover, organizations that are non-compliant will be hit with stronger penalties with businesses needing to upgrade their data privacy controls.
Advanced analytics and Data Security:
A lot of antivirus software and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) tools and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) software are in use to reduce risk to data. SIEM in particular generates a huge amount of data making it difficult to get to the information you need to at the time. Advanced data analytics tools will help organizations sift through information more quickly. Technologies such as the User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) will help establish stricter control over their IT infrastructures to overcome their weak points and fix any security issues before risk to any data occurs.
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Customized Security:
Security vendors are offering a new range of solutions to cater to each and every customer’s infrastructure. With a more personalized approach, they are factoring in IT infrastructure size and complexity, industry and budget to offer a more customized approach providing organizations with solutions made specifically for their requirements. The trend will be that smaller specialist software houses will win business from larger, less flexible vendors as they will be ideally suited to meet the specific business needs of their clients.
CARTA will Improve Decision-making:
There’s a new approach in decision-making. Called Continuous Risk and Trust Assessment or CARTA, it was invented to replace the old school of thought. Proposed by Gartner in 2017, the new approach will review, re-assess and adjust whatever needs to be revamped. You might see more of it in 2018 to lessen cyber risks. This will allow real-time assessment of risk and trust in IT for companies to make better decisions about what kind of security to put in place.
Block chain and Data Security:
The next best thing to address cyber threats is blockchain technology. Data will be more decentralized stored in an open source ledger instead of being in a single location. With this technology data hacking or tampering will become more difficult as everyone in the blockchain network would be able to see the ledger had changed in some way or another. Blockchain will be beneficial for industries securing highly sensitive information.
Email Out:
Email is thought to be a critical component of business communication but security experts don’t have many options to protect it. Today, 90 percent of email is spam. Storing messages and sharing files insecurely can also face security issues swelling to multiple gigabytes.
Enter SMS:
On the other hand, SMS messaging is exceedingly easy to manage. That’s why texting is fast overtaking email in global communication as it is more secure and manageable. It is estimated that by the year 2025, email will probably be eliminated from personal and professional life.
Face Recognition will be Everything:
These days certain modern smart devices incorporate fingerprint entry. But fingerprint biometrics is a slow process. Enter face recognition. Faces can be read and cannot be faked because a computer reads each one as a unique Fourier transform. For instance, Apple Corporation’s purchase of RealFace can read faces instantly and error is almost non-existent. Soon the only digital security you will ever need will be a mirror or a screen.
As outsider and insider threats to organizations increase this year we will see a rise in the trend of data regulatory technology. This will help in avoiding inadequate security practices in organizations and institutions where data integrity is of utmost importance.
