What are the most important cybersecurity trends to watch for in the next year?

The Zero Trust model, which I actively endorse, necessitates rigorous authentication and continuous verification across all network operations, reducing the attack surface and preventing unauthorized access. Yet, I caution against viewing it as a cure-all; implementing Zero Trust involves comprehensive changes that may challenge traditional IT practices. For instance, in deploying Zero Trust for a client, we used multifactor authentication and real-time monitoring, which proved effective in mitigating data breaches and impeding lateral movements by threat actors, demonstrating that while Zero Trust is demanding, it is also exceedingly beneficial.

Yes, AI enabled spear-phishing attacks could be one of the attack tactics highly abused by attackers in coming days. Due to the advancements in AI, it’s easier to generate a gullible phishing email to perform social engineering.

Any tool that can be used for good can also be used by bad actors. Organizations should be extremely careful with what they are allowing their employees to feed into AI tools. Building and implementing AI policies for how the employees should or should not use these tools is extremely important.

One beneficial strategy in the shift to remote work has been the development of robust cybersecurity awareness programs. However, I must express my disagreement with the over-reliance on conventional security tools like VPNs and firewalls as complete solutions. The complexity of current cyber threats necessitates a layered security approach that includes advanced threat detection and multi-factor authentication. In practice, integrating behavioral analytics has proven effective. It enables real-time anomaly detection and a critical capability when managing the heightened security risks of remote work environments. This approach exemplifies how proactive and innovative security measures can bolster an organization's defense mechanisms.

Knowing what assets to protect and what events are taking place is a multidisciplinary feat that usually involves the cooperation of the security team, systems operations, developers, engineering, systems architects as well as any other business stakeholders. Because of that cyber resilience seems to be an impossible task. However, if good general application resilience, high availability, automation and disaster recovery practices are already in place, cyber resistance really is as simple as implementing the right security tools for the platform the application resides on. And in the age of cloud many of these tools are complimentary so achieving cyber resilience can be done with low to no cost and very little operational overhead.