researchHQ’s Key Takeaways:
- In what is sure to be another unpredictable year, modern, flexible technologies will help companies to increase their network security while advancing their digital transformation goals.
- More organisations are expected to adopt Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) to help manage continued remote and hybrid working.
- 5G has the potential to foster significant business transformation, however, it must be supported by enterprise-grade security.
- Machine learning will help organisations to build proactive security systems, allow organisations to avoid business disrupting security incidents.
- As the adoption of IoT devices continues to grow, organisations will adopt new IoT security solutions to prevent a proliferation of unmanaged vulnerabilities throughout their network.
For me, the simplest way to summarize 2020 is with one word: unpredictable. Though each year has a level of unpredictability, 2020 was an extreme example. As we look forward into 2021, we hope for positive changes, but 2020 will always be a reminder to plan for unpredictability. In light of that, here a few network security predictions for the coming year.
Network Security Predictions: Planning for Unpredictability
Many of the technologies that companies turned to as digital transformation ramped up were incredibly helpful in getting through a year no one could have predicted. The key watchwords were hosted, as-a-service and cloud-delivered. Whether applied to cybersecurity, networking, compute, storage or anything else, these technologies give companies the ability to prepare for unpredictability and put in place flexibility. This can be the flexibility to quickly scale up, and it can also be the ability to relocate people and resources as needed. In 2021, plan for unpredictability, and your planning will serve you well even during predictable times.
SASE: Driving Cloud-delivered Networking and Security Transformation
The workplace as we know it has changed forever. The rapid and massive shift to remote work – exacerbated by the COVID-19 outbreak – has dramatically accelerated the need to modernize infrastructure. In 2021, as remote and hybrid work are expected to continue, more organizations are expected to turn to the secure access service edge (SASE) for a complete cloud-delivered networking and security solution. This will help them provide secure connectivity for any user, on any device, accessing any application from any location.
5G Security: Not Just for Carriers
The promise of 5G is much more than faster browsing on mobile phones. Done right, 5G can bring massive business transformation by enabling “cutting the wires” in environments where Wi-Fi wasn’t good enough. But for 5G to live up to its promise of enabling smart supply chains, autonomous transportation, smart manufacturing and more, it will need to have enterprise-grade security. Service providers will have a key role to play in securing their 5G networks, but anyone rolling out business applications on 5G will need to pay attention to that security and possibly layer on their own security.
Machine Learning: Helping Cybersecurity Systems Becomes More Proactive
Threat actors are continuing to use the easy availability of computing power, including the public cloud, to quickly morph and increase the speed of attacks. To handle this, next-generation firewalls are using machine learning to evolve from systems that react to the last attack to systems that are continuously learning, preventing zero-day threats inline, automating policy recommendations and proactively improving security.
