Enterprise Cybersecurity and Tech Trends in Cybersecurity for 2024 - Phani Mudigonda, CIO, Inspira Enterprise

Cybersecurity landscape has evolved tremendously over the last decade.  As the perils and impact of weak cybersecurity become increasingly evident, it has moved from being a backroom conversation to a boardroom discussion.  Not just businesses, even nations and governments have started taking steps to strengthen their security postures.   On one hand while emerging technologies are transforming the tech landscape, on the other hand they are also making us more vulnerable.

Growing importance of Enterprise Security

With remote and hybrid working models dissolving the cybersecurity perimeter, enterprises are compelled to secure their digital assets while ensuring their availability and performance to improve employee productivity.

APT groups are leveraging advanced methods such as exploiting Zero-day vulnerabilities and other social engineering techniques to gain access to the organization networks.  Ransomware attacks are becoming more prevalent and expensive with cybercriminals attacking enterprises, high-value targets, and demanding humungous ransom.  Cyberattacks are disrupting business operations causing loss of productivity and revenues, increase in downtime, customer churn, and brand damage. 

With the establishment of a robust cybersecurity strategy, enterprises can maintain business continuity and safeguard their data and resources from cyber threats by deploying advanced security solutions that scale across highly distributed environments.  Enterprise security with new-age technologies, tactics, and processes can significantly prevent and mitigate damage from cyberattacks while protecting sensitive data, and intellectual property, and maintaining the trust of their customers.  In today’s ever-evolving digital landscape, protecting digital assets is becoming critical, driving more and more enterprises to adopt cybersecurity solutions.  According to Research and Markets, the global market for Enterprise Cyber Security Solutions estimated at US$56.5 Billion in the year 2022, is projected to reach a revised size of US$116.9 Billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 9.5% over the analysis period 2022-2030.

Rise of Artificial Intelligence

With threat actors becoming more sophisticated, leveraging AI is becoming more of a necessity transforming the way businesses address threats.  Security systems powered with AI can effortlessly detect and analyze massive datasets, facilitating quick identification of potential threats.   The technology also helps in automating security processes thereby reducing human intervention and fatigue and enhancing incident response times and accurate threat detection.  In the coming year, further integration of AI technology into cybersecurity solutions is expected.  Unfortunately, hackers are also harnessing AI to automate attacks at higher speeds and devise persuasive social engineering campaigns.  It is imperative for cybersecurity experts to further finetune their algorithms to detect adversarial AI in record time.

Integration of GRC and Cybersecurity

In recent times, we have witnessed regulatory frameworks becoming very stringent and complex too.  Regulatory bodies are ensuring compliance is non-negotiable for not only the highly regulated but other sectors as well.  Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) Program plays a key role in managing cybersecurity risks in enterprises.  This framework also helps organizations to establish a holistic and proactive approach to cybersecurity.  To ensure better collaboration between GRC and Cybersecurity the most appropriate technology must be leveraged and a strong cybersecurity culture in the organization must be established.  This integration will enable organizations to adopt a holistic approach to managing risks while ensuring cybersecurity measures are aligned with regulatory requirements.  This collaboration will also provide a structured approach to incident response and recovery.

Industry 4.0 and Cybersecurity

Industry 4.0 or the Fourth Industrial Revolution integrates digital technologies, advanced analytics, IoT, and AI into the manufacturing processes.  With the digital landscape becoming more sophisticated and cyber threats continuing to surge, organizations are adopting automation to combat them with cybersecurity taking priority.  The manufacturing sector which followed the traditional approach for a very long time has begun to move towards digitization in the recent past.  However, the convergence of OT and IT has given rise to a complex attack surface that requires sophisticated cybersecurity solutions.  In the coming year, there will be more emphasis on implementing robust cybersecurity strategies to tackle the challenges of Industry 4.0.  Manufacturing industries are beginning to recognize the importance of securing their interconnected and digitized operations.  In the auto manufacturing domain, with the advent of Electric Vehicles and Connected Cars, it becomes all the more important to implement cybersecurity measures not just for the protection of vehicles but for the safety of the passengers as well.

Automating cybersecurity operations across organizations of all sizes

Organizations irrespective of their size want to automate several of their cybersecurity operations, today.  They have begun to realize the huge loss that can be caused by one single security incident.  Businesses want to enhance their defensive capabilities to address the sophisticated and growing volume of cyber threats.  This is being made possible by automating their cybersecurity operations and safeguarding their digital assets in an increasingly complex threat landscape.  More investments will be seen in automating real-time security, including incident detection, mitigation, and remediation allowing cybersecurity professionals to focus on more complex threat analysis.