Top Cyber Security Trends in 2023
The top corporate cybersecurity trends are commonly inspired by a mixture of responses to leading cyber threats, new technologies, and long-term security goals. These are some of the top security trends and technologies defining the cybersecurity space in 2023.
#1. Hybrid Data Centers
The rise of cloud computing has provided organizations with much greater infrastructure scalability than was previously possible. With cloud environments, organizations can scale their infrastructure up or down on an as-needed basis.
While some organizations have transitioned their data centers completely to the cloud, others have embraced cloud computing as a way to augment on-prem data centers. A hybrid data center uses orchestration so that data and applications can be moved between on-prem and cloud-based infrastructure over the network as needed.
Hybrid data centers enable organizations to better tailor their environments to their infrastructure and security needs. For example, more sensitive data and applications can be hosted on-prem, while resources that require more scalability can live in the cloud. The use of orchestration and connected infrastructure enables these resources to move seamlessly between the two as needed.
#2. Use of AI in Cyberattacks
Generative AI has rapidly taken off in 2023. While the technology first entered the public consciousness in late 2022 with the rise of ChatGPT, multiple alternatives have emerged since.
The rise of AI has significant impacts on cybersecurity both from an offensive and defensive perspective. On the offensive side, ChatGPT and similar tools have already been used by cyber threat actors to streamline and improve cyberattacks with an across-the-board increase in attacks year-over-year.
Generative AI has multiple applications for offensive cybersecurity. For example, ChatGPT and similar tools can easily write extremely convincing emails for phishing attacks. It’s also possible for an attacker to bypass the built-in guardrails in these technologies to get them to write malware or teach aspiring cybercriminals to perform new attacks.
While AI also has numerous potential use cases in the defensive realm, its growing maturity creates an arms race between attackers and defenders. Whichever side makes the most effective use of it will likely have a significant advantage in the future.
#3. Hybrid Mesh Firewall
Corporate networks are growing increasingly distributed and heterogeneous. With a combination of on-prem, cloud-based, and remote locations, it can be difficult to deploy and manage firewall solutions that provide consistent security protection and enforcement across an organization’s entire network environment. However, offering this consistent security is also critical to protecting the organization against advanced attacks.
To solve this challenge, organizations are increasingly turning to hybrid mesh firewalls, which combine various types of firewalls into an integrated, centrally managed security architecture. This enables organizations to deploy the firewall solution that makes sense for a particular environment but also maintain centralized visibility, management, and policy enforcement across their entire infrastructure.
#4. CNAPP
The emergence of cloud environments has had a dramatic impact on application development and security. Cloud environments enable rapid, DevOps development cycles and can eliminate the need for developers to maintain and secure the environments where their applications live. Additionally, the growth of the cloud has encouraged the use of containerization to ensure that applications can move freely between on-prem and various cloud environments.
With these changes to application development also come significant impacts on application security (AppSec). Cloud applications often work differently than their on-prem counterparts and operate in a distinct deployment environment. As a result, they require AppSec solutions tailored to their unique needs.
Gartner defined the cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) to describe security solutions that integrate the various capabilities needed for cloud AppSec into a single solution. By integrating multiple capabilities into a single solution and dashboard, CNAPP helps to fight security sprawl in the cloud and enables security teams to more effectively monitor, manage, and secure their cloud-based applications.
#5. Threat Exposure Management
The growing volume, sophistication, and speed of cyberattacks mean that a reactive approach to cybersecurity is not effective. To effectively manage their cybersecurity risk and protect against growing cyber threats, organizations need to proactively take action to assess and manage their risk exposure.
Threat exposure management (TEM) is a risk-centric approach to strategic security planning. Security teams identify potential threats to the organization and assess the risk that each poses to the company. Based on this information, the organization can develop, prioritize, and implement mitigation strategies for various risks.
As the cyber threat landscape and various regulations demand a more risk-focused approach to security, companies are increasingly embracing TEM. By performing this process of threat identification and assessment regularly, the organization can maintain visibility into evolving threats and ensure that it is prepared to address novel attack vectors.
#6. Comprehensive Protection
Corporate IT environments have rapidly evolved and grown more diverse in recent years. The rise of the cloud had significant impacts on corporate IT environments and application development. Hybrid and remote work expanded the role of mobile devices in the workforce. Internet of Things (IoT) devices have grown more sophisticated and ubiquitous, a trend that the maturation and expansion of 5G mobile networks will likely encourage.
As a result of all of this expansion, companies face a much wider range of threats and potential attack vectors than ever before. Cyber threat actors can target vulnerabilities in traditional endpoints, mobile devices, IoT systems, and remote work infrastructure. With more systems to monitor and secure, security teams are more likely to miss something, allowing attackers to gain access to their systems.
The end result of all of this technological growth and innovation is a massive expansion of organizations’ cyber attack surface. As a result, organizations need to identify a wider range of potential attack vectors and ensure that they have solutions in place ready to manage all of these risks.
#7. Security Consolidation
The expansion of corporate attack surfaces and the growing maturity of the cyber threat landscape has resulted in an explosion in the number of security tools that companies operate. With a wide range of potential threats, companies need to close security gaps and, in the past, often chose to do so by deploying point security products designed to address a specific attack vector or enhance security on a particular platform.
However, the rest of this focus on point security solutions is a complex and unusable security architecture. Each tool generates alerts and notifications, adding to alert fatigue and making it more difficult for security personnel to identify and remediate real threats. Additionally, the need to operate many different security solutions increases training requirements, introduces the need to constantly context switch between various dashboards, and increases the risk of security gaps and inconsistent security policy enforcement.
As a result of these challenges, many organizations are pulling back and focusing on improving security through security consolidation. Instead of disconnected point solutions, they are looking to integrated platforms that provide the security capabilities that they need in a single solution. These platforms offer improved visibility and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of threat detection and response by reducing manual processes and cognitive load on security personnel.
