After countless discussions with our clients, colleagues, industry thought leaders, and most importantly, taking into account our own lessons learned, we came up with a list of predictions for this year that we believe could mostly come true, if not this year, but certainly within the next couple of years.  

We also decided to share these predictions with everyone else and hopefully learn from your experiences to shape our own.   

In general, we believe that this new decade will be seen as a decade for remote work that is increasingly dependent on automation, driven by AI, and a workforce that will be privacy-conscious. Typical security scare tactics of yesterday have lost their steam, and executives must start to show measurable value from ongoing investments towards a safe and secure operating environment.  

Fat budgets will become increasingly difficult to justify, and there will be a massive recycling at the helm of senior leadership. A new generation of leaders will emerge who naturally lean in favor of security and privacy bills of rights, and will transform the corporate culture as we know it today, which would hopefully yield a better future for all us. 

Here’s the list of predictions: 

1. Data Integrity: Hackers will start leaning towards causing data integrity loss, which could lead to long term financial losses. We can expect to see attackers changing their methodology from pure data theft and website hacking to attacking data integrity itself.   
2. Cyber Insurance: Cyber Insurers will demand better Due Diligence in exchange for keeping cyber insurance premiums near previous year’s levels 3.
3. Consolidation: Cybersecurity platform consolidation will become more prevalent as boards will demand return on continued investments.  
4. Privileged Access: FIDO (Fast Identity Online) will gain more traction and companies will keep investing in Privilege Access Isolation 
5. More Formidable Enemy: Hackers will look to become more organized and more commercialized, perhaps even having their own call centres – something already seen with fraudulent dating sites. 
6. Universal Bill of Rights: A push towards a global regulation system for data privacy and security will gain momentum, but won’t reach the finish line. 
7. Geo-Political Concerns: Global politics will start to take cybersecurity concerns more seriously with countries passing legislation to protect their electoral systems.  
8. Identity Becomes Center-Stage: More global companies will gravitate towards segmenting their environment based on user identities. 
9. Show Me The Value: Governing boards will start demanding more proof of investment value. There will be added pressure on CISO’s to show return on investment in quantifiable terms 
10. Class-Action Lawsuits: There will be a surge in class action lawsuits against large enterprises that experience a security breach. This will be more common in the Financial Services and Retail industries. 
11. Election Bending: This is election year in the US. Would be interesting to see how the cybersecurity community is impacted, and how we leverage our budgets to create a more safe and environment.  
12. Zero Trust & Identity Based Micro Segmentation: Identity based network segmentation (cloud or traditional) will continue to gain traction as it solves several problems with a singular focus by implementing the zero trust model as a core architectural principle. 

We will be tracking these predictions throughout the year and soliciting your feedback on which ones matter to you the most, and also adding new predictions through the year based on your recommendations. Look forward to a healthy dialog.