What Is the Future of Cybersecurity?

The increasing number of IoT devices, cloud services, interconnected devices, and other advanced IT systems no doubt shapes the future of cybersecurity. The topic simply cannot be discussed in isolation because the future of cybersecurity is highly dependent on the overall future of information technology and the evolving cyber threat landscape.

The possible future scenario

It is already clear that cybersecurity will continue playing a very important role both in the business sector and in our personal lives. One of the possible reasons for this is the advancement of critical systems we use every day. Specialists say that they will become even more complex and tightly connected with each other, which may have an impact on their security. It is also believed that we will no longer imagine our lives in this fast-paced world without virtual assistants. Finally, we will heavily rely on IoT devices, and, possibly, ten years from now our daily commute will be more pleasant thanks to connected cars featuring the latest high-tech innovations. All these changes will no doubt result in serious challenges for future cybersecurity specialists.

Give us more cybersecurity specialists!

There are lots of things we want to know, and what is going to happen in the future is no doubt one of them. While we are no clairvoyants and cannot predict the future events, we can easily foresee that the job cybersecurity specialists do will become more important than ever since the rapidly growing number of cyber attacks is not going to decline anytime soon. Uh-oh, Houston, we have a problem here. It has turned out that there are not enough cybersecurity specialists to protect us against cyber attacks. According to the 2017 Global Information Security Workforce Study, Europe will face a shortage of 350,000 professionals by 2022. There is nothing positive about that in the picture of the increasing rate of cybersecurity threats.

Cyber attacks are not going to stop growing in sophistication

According to specialists analyzing trends, more and more sophisticated cyber-attack technologies will be developed in the future, both for defense and offense. Cyber criminals will continue looking for ways to monetize cyber attacks, terrorist groups will shift to an online medium, and, finally, just like today, ordinary people will continue showing off their technical skills thus contributing to the increasing number of cyber attacks. We sort of know what our possible enemies are and have at least some knowledge about their weapons in the physical world, but anyone can be the enemy in cyber space. Without a doubt, cyber criminals’ skills evolve together with evolving technology and hacking techniques, so suppressing large-scale cyber attacks might become even a greater future cybersecurity challenge.

The role of artificial intelligence (AI) in cybersecurity

The lack of specialists will inevitably force cybersecurity professionals to find new ways to deal with security issues people and organizations face. Luckily, there is artificial intelligence. Specialists say that it may be used in the future as a force multiplier when dealing with complex cybersecurity problems. For example, artificial intelligence could be used to detect suspicious events, control automated tools, and code errors in case any are found. Solutions based on artificial intelligence may even help to prevent cyber attacks before they happen, according to Shashi Kiran. Also, sophisticated AI-systems will soon be able to analyze great amounts of information from different sources and even assist with testing. Generally speaking, the involvement of artificial intelligence in day-to-day work will considerably contribute to saving cybersecurity specialists’ time. As a consequence, they would focus more on identifying and learning sophisticated tactics of cyber attacks.

The power of data

The increasing number of devices, systems, and IoT gadgets has inevitably resulted in an increased amount of data, specialists say. The rise of social-media websites has produced even more data. Specialists have already learned how to use it for research, marketing, and many other purposes, and it is very likely that data will help specialists fight cyber threats in the future as well. In the digital world, cyber attacks leave a digital trail that can be used to predict the upcoming attacks and identify cyber criminals behind the attack. At present, this may take a lot of time, but it should be as quick as a flash with cognitive security technologies that will undoubtedly be widely used in the future. As for ordinary users, it is very likely that they will also finally understand the importance of sensitive information and will treat it with more respect.

A hacked device may result in a lost life

It is no longer a secret that IoT gadgets that most of us have at home can be hacked without difficulty. Shockingly, it has recently turned out that the healthcare industry is not immune to hacking too – medical devices can get hacked as well. You probably suspect that such attacks may cost innocent peoples’ lives. cybersecurity specialists are well aware of this fact too, so it is very likely that they will collaborate with device manufacturers to help them improve their devices’ security in the near future. It is suspected that attacks against the healthcare sector will grow in number and sophistication even more, so it is critical to think about the threats of tomorrow while fixing the issues that have already been identified. Preventing sophisticated attacks against the healthcare industry will no doubt be a challenge for future cybersecurity specialists.

Biometrics: the future of authentication

While most of us cannot imagine our lives without a trusted password manager today, it is believed that the password system will die in the near future simply because it will no longer meet the users’ needs, i.e., even the strongest password will not be able to ensure their virtual security. This will give rise to new advanced authentication techniques, such as biometrics. It is expected that biometric security will considerably reduce cybersecurity-related problems companies and individuals face these days. Fingerprint readers, iris scanners, facial recognition technology, palm vein pattern recognition, finger vein pattern recognition, to name only a few existing biometric techniques, will become mainstream. Adapting to change is one more challenge future cybersecurity will face.

Keeping ourselves safe online will become as important as taking care of our physical well-being in the future. We are probably all aware of the fact that it is extremely important to buckle a seatbelt when driving, wear a helmet when hopping up on a bike, or put on a pair of glasses when using a soldering iron, so it is very likely that we will put the same amount of effort to ensure the safety of our cybersecurity in the future as well. cybersecurity specialists do a huge job to protect us, but their efforts will remain fruitless unless we do something to improve our virtual security ourselves.