Gartner issues Top six Security and Risk Management Trends For 2018

The 2018 Gartner Security and Risk Management London Summit will be held from September 10th to 11th. Analysts will explore the trends facing security administrators and vendor risk assessment frameworks at the summit.

Gartner believes that business leaders are paying more attention to the impact of cybersecurity on corporate output. Security managers should use this support and six new trends to improve the resiliency of their businesses while enhancing their position.

Trend 1: Executives will eventually realise that cybersecurity will affect the achievement of corporate goals and will also affect corporate reputation.

IT security is an extensive topic and a necessary component of any e-commerce strategy. Business managers have been reluctant to accept this, but recent events have changed their perceptions. Such as:

• The Equifax data breach has caused the company’s CEO, CIO and CSO to lose their jobs;
• The WannaCry attack caused a global loss of $1.5 billion to $4 billion;
• After Yahoo’s data breach, Verizon received a $350 million discount for Yahoo’s acquisition.

Peter FirstBrook, vice president of research at Gartner, said “Business leaders and senior stakeholders, at last, appreciate security as much more than just tactical, technical stuff done by overly serious, unsmiling types in the company basement, research vice president at Gartner. “Security organizations must capitalize on this trend by working closer with business leadership and clearly linking security issues with business initiatives that could be affected.”

Trend 2: Regulatory, mandatory data protection policies are affecting the plans of the e-commerce industry and place more demands on data reliability.

Customer data is the lifeblood of the e-commerce industry. Recent “Cambridge Analytical Data Disclosure Incidents” and Equifax data breaches have shown that companies face significant risks when processing such data. Moreover, the relevant laws are becoming more and more complicated. For example, on May 25, 2018, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulations GDPR came into effect. At the same time, if companies do not adequately protect data, there are a lot of more massive penalties waiting for them.

In the United States, the number of organisations experiencing data breaches has grown from less than 100 in 2008 to more than 600 in 2016.

Firstbrook believes that “It’s no surprise that, as the value of data has increased, the number of breaches has risen too. In this new reality, full data management programs — not just compliance — are essential, as is fully understanding the potential liabilities involved in handling data.”

Trend 3: Security products are rapidly leveraging cloud services to provide more flexible solutions.

The new detection technology, activity and verification models require a significant amount of data that can quickly crash an internal security solution. This situation has spawned the need for cloud security products. Cloud security services are better able to provide more flexible and adaptable solutions with near real-time data.

Firstbrook recommends that “Avoid making outdated investment decisions. Seek out providers that propose cloud-first services, that have solid data management and machine learning (ML)competency, and that can protect your data at least as well as you can.”

Trend 4: Machine learning is bringing value to simple tasks and can also assess suspicious matters in the human analysis.

Switching to cloud services creates opportunities for companies to use machine learning to solve security problems (e.g., adaptive verification, internal threats, malicious advanced attackers, etc.). Gartner predicts that machine learning will become a standard part of security solutions by 2025 and will make up for the shortage of technology and personnel.

FirstBrook believes that “Look at how ML can address narrow and well-defined problem sets, such as classifying executable files, and be careful not to be suckered by hype. Unless a vendor can explain in clear terms how its ML implementation enables its product to outperform competitors or previous approaches, it’s very difficult to unpack marketing from good ML.”

Trend 5: Security procurement decisions are increasingly dependent on geopolitical factors.

Cyber warfare has intensified, and cyber political interference and government demands left backdoors for accessing software and services, all of which have led to new geopolitical threats in software and infrastructure procurement. Recently, the ban imposed by the US government on Russia (Kaspersky) and Chinese companies (Huawei) is the best example. Recent

Firstbrook believes that “It’s vital to account for the geopolitical considerations of partners, suppliers and jurisdictions that are important to your organisation. Include supply chain source questions in RFIs, RFPs and contracts.”

Trend 6: Over-reliance on the threat posed by electronic technology is driving the decentralization of the entire ecosystem.

The Internet is driving a wave of centralisation, and cloud computing is an obvious example. While there are many benefits to doing so, a good security team should also consider the risks.

Firstbrook believes that “Evaluate the security implications of centralization on the availability, confidentiality and resiliency of digital business plans. Then, if the risks of centralization could seriously threaten organizational goals, explore an alternative, decentralized architecture.”