In the ever-changing field of cybersecurity, where innovation and uncertainty intersect, 2023 was nothing short of chaotic. As the dark background of AI-powered threats emerges and court rulings redefine the consequences of security failures, the security industry is at a pivotal moment. CISO faces jail time.
The SolarWinds decision and the Uber breach have already reshaped the security landscape and propelled CISOs into the spotlight. Governments are now looking to follow the example of security leaders, reinforcing the urgency of strengthening digital defenses.
As the new year progresses, we take time to reflect on how cybersecurity has evolved and what it means for the year ahead. I asked my colleagues for their thoughts on what to expect in 2024, with the aim of bringing more stability in the coming year.
The evolving threat landscape requires evolving security measures.
Our CISO, Moshe pointed to three key threats emerging in 2023 that will impact and impact security teams in 2024.
Unsurprisingly, he shared that AI threats and mitigation were top of mind. He said that in 2023, we will see increasing adoption of AI in both offensive and defensive cybersecurity strategies.
This trend will intensify in 2024 as AI-driven threat actors become more sophisticated and organizations implement advanced AI-driven security measures. The industry recognizes and will continue to recognize the importance of staying ahead of these evolving threats through behavioral analytics, anomaly detection, and ethical AI practices.
The democratization of access to AI has made the need to manage AI trust, risk, and security even more urgent and clear. Organizations will also need to review AI trustworthiness, risk management, and security in the coming year and will need to evaluate the AI model, its application governance, fairness, reliability, robustness, security, and data protection.
Gen AI’s attack surface is across the entire AI lifecycle, from development to runtime. Therefore, security leaders will need to include solutions and techniques in their security programs for model monitoring, data, and content anomaly detection, AI data protection, model management, and operations, attack resilience, and AI-specific application security.
Moshe also points out that 2023 saw a significant focus on privacy issues, and the momentum of this trend will only increase in the following year.
As privacy regulations become more stringent and the protection of user data comes to the fore, organizations are stepping up their efforts to navigate this complex landscape. They focus not only on compliance, but also on increasing data security with encryption, robust access control, and data anonymization.
Finally, he emphasized that the significance of supply chain security grew prominently in 2023 and is poised to intensify further this year. He recognized that cyberattacks directed at the supply chain possess the capability to disrupt businesses and even pose a threat to national security.
As a result, organizations are increasing their efforts to assess and strengthen their supply chain security, recognizing that robust supplier risk management practices and continuous monitoring are needed to address these growing risks.
He added that as these threats increase in intensity, it underscores the industry’s commitment to staying ahead of the ever-evolving threat landscape. In 2024, cybersecurity professionals will be challenged to not only adapt but also innovate and proactively secure their organizations against these dynamic and persistent threats.
Prioritization and remediation
As the threat landscape evolves, so does the enterprise attack and continues to expand far beyond what the most effective patch management programs can cover. The time has come for a forward-thinking defense strategy that requires a modernization of the portfolio of assessment tools.
These tools must not only inventory remediable and unremediable exposures, but also prioritize detection based on what an attacker might actually do. To do this, they must verify the reality of the exposure based on the ability to penetrate existing security defenses.
Gilad Elyashar, CPO of Aqua confirms these thoughts: “The market is headed for a correction. Attacks are increasing. Attackers can spin in the cloud and attack your environment in an hour.
How quickly a threat can be identified, the risk prioritized when it passes, where to find it and how to stop it, that’s what the market demands in cloud security solutions.”
Gilad acknowledges that not every business is at the same level of risk maturity, but he sees the market changing during 2023 in the sense that visibility tools are not enough. These provide some value in identifying the risk but do not stop attacks.
With many attackers bypassing the capabilities of these tools, as proven by this year’s Aqua Nautilus threat report, conversations happening now among CISOs are about reducing the attack surface. This shifts the conversation to not only seeing and blocking what’s trying to get in but also stopping and reacting to things that do.
What does all this mean for our partners? I asked Jeannette Lee Heung, Senior Director of Global Channel and Ecosystems, about it. He expects 2024 to be a critical point where partners will have to deal with the increased demand for advanced cyber security and the constraints of tightening budgets.
A clear trend is that customers are acquiring appropriate tools to solve their company’s challenges.
Despite customers’ awareness of the necessity of these tools, a prevailing problem remains: finding workers with the required skills or expertise to fully utilize the technology they’ve invested in.
Looking to the future, it is clear that a number of partners will direct investments into advisory and consulting services tailored to the specific needs of customers. This foresight is driven by the knowledge that the services market is poised for continued expansion.
Because traditional partners are heavily dependent on the resale transactional model, they are at a crossroads. In response to the evolving environment, they are likely to explore strategic options such as mergers, acquisitions, or partnerships with specialized service companies.
This strategic shift is necessary to bridge the gap between revenue retention and meeting the evolving needs of customers in a dynamic cybersecurity environment.
A final prediction: as cloud adoption expands, more and more organizations will need to strike a balance between cost, efficiency, value, and security.
To that end, more and more CISOs, along with CIOs, will look to consolidated platforms that can help people like me manage cloud spend, security posture, asset configuration management, quality, and cost optimization. This is one prediction I’m looking forward to.
As we look ahead to 2024, the security world is on the verge of great advances, both good and bad. I hope we’re wrong about some of these, especially when it comes to weaponizing the AI, although early signs suggest otherwise. Embracing these predictions will help you plan for robust security measures—essential for organizations in an increasingly complex and dynamic digital environment.
By staying informed and adopting innovative security solutions, businesses can navigate the evolving cloud-native technology landscape with confidence.