Gartner’s top eight predictions for the next four years double down on one specific thing: organizations will, and must, adapt to face growing cybersecurity threats. At the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit in Australia last week, analysts outlined these eight predictions in detail:
Through 2023, government regulations requiring organizations to provide consumer privacy rights will cover 5 billion citizens and more than 70% of global GDP.
By 2025, 80% of enterprises will adopt a strategy to unify web, cloud services and private application access from a single vendor’s SSE platform.
60% of organizations will embrace Zero Trust as a starting point for security by 2025. More than half will fail to realize the benefits
By 2025, 60% of organizations will use cybersecurity risk as a primary determinant in conducting third-party transactions and business engagements.
Through 2025, 30% of nation states will pass legislation that regulates ransomware payments, fines and negotiations, up from less than 1% in 2021.
By 2025, threat actors will have weaponized operational technology environments successfully to cause human casualties.
By 2025, 70% of CEOs will mandate a culture of organizational resilience to survive coinciding threats from cybercrime, severe weather events, civil unrest and political instabilities.
By 2026, 50% of C-level executives will have performance requirements related to risk built into their employment contracts
“Gartner Unveils the Top Eight Cybersecurity Predictions for 2022-23.” (2022). Newsroom, Gartner. Retrieved on 29 June, 2022 from Gartner Unveils the Top Eight Cybersecurity Predictions for 2022-23.
The reality of the cybersecurity landscape is that it must evolve to match the increasingly independent actions of individual employees. We see this reflected in the first and second predictions. These predictions show a notable shift in public perception of cybersecurity. Finally, we find cybersecurity moving with actual steps towards individual protection and individual responsibility. This June, congress released a draft of the bipartisan Data Privacy and Protection bill. According to the National Law Review’s coverage, part of the bill will give individuals “the right to access, correct, delete, and portability of, covered data that pertains to them,” as well as place restrictions on algorithm use and data collection. What Gartner hints at in their first prediction is already beginning here in the US.
Apart from prediction number six (quite alarming, but hopefully one that increased cyber awareness and hardened security will lessen the probability of occurrence), each of these predictions is exciting. Of course, only 30% of organizations benefiting from Zero Trust (or practicing Zero Trust correctly) isn’t a cause for celebration, but a move towards intentional trust is; a move towards a culture of trusted identity is a move towards secure data and privacy protection. Looking at these predictions leaves no question in our mind: technology is evolving, but we are rising to the challenge and changing with it. Here’s to an exciting next four years!
