Top 10 Cybersecurity Predictions for 2015

Fueled by cybercrime, cyber warfare and cyber terrorism, the cost of cybersecurity and risk management will double in 2015.  That’s the bad news.  The good news is there will be a shift to cyber offense that will begin to stem the tide of cyber threats.

1. Motivated Threat Actors – The number and sophistication of cyber threats will continue to increase exponentially. Fueled by both geopolitics and economic incentives, international (and often state-sponsored) criminal organizations will escalate their development of offensive cyber capabilities.
2. Redefining the Defense – The demands of cybersecurity are fundamentally changing IT.  Cyber risk management and security compliance will take an equal weight to other design criteria like functionality, capacity and performance.  Financial ROIs will be balanced by a new understanding of risk exposure for sub-par solutions.
3. Three Heads vs. One – In large organizations, there are technical roles that require the knowledge and experience of CIOs, CTOs and CISOs. While some have predicted the death of the CIO role, we see instead a balancing of responsibility between three peers.
4. Investments Will Increase – In the face of pernicious new threats, the cost of cybersecurity and risk management will remain on track to double over the next three years.
5. New Fronts – The expansion of mobility, cloud computing, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies and the Internet of Things will provide new (and previously unforeseen) opportunities for cyber crime, cyber warfare and cyber terrorism.
6. Universal Monitoring – As a result of cyber incidents, every organization (or person) will be using some form of continuous monitoring service (threat, scanning, identity or credit). These will be either legislated, mandated by financials institution or insurers or acquired on their own behalf.
7. Business Leadership on Policy Development – Executive leadership will lead to further development and maturation of standards across private sector and governmental organizations. This approach to security and cyber risk management will reduce the potential for “unforeseen” damage from cyber attacks, cyber warfare and cyber terrorism.
8. New Threat Detection and Response Technologies – There will be an increased use of crowdsourcing, machine intelligence and cognitive/advanced analytics to detect and stay ahead of threats. Bounties for catching bad actors and advanced algorithmics will help the “good guys” identify and stay ahead of the hordes of malicious players.
9. Improved Security – New and better applications of authentication, EMV, encryption and tokenized solutions will increase the security of payments and other personal and confidential information. Apple Pay and other next-generation solutions will overcome anti-NFC inertia and lead to increasing adoption of mobile-based security technologies for both retail payment and other applications, such as in health care, where critical and confidential information is exchanged.
10. Back to Offense – We will see the beginnings of a shift from cyber defense to cyber offense.  From attempting to build impenetrable systems to building systems that make it possible to identify attackers and provide the means to prosecute, frustrate or delay them.