IDEAS TO SHAPE THE FUTURE

Nowadays, organizations and society rely on technology – and where there is technology, there are concerns about cybersecurity. The industry is currently at a crossroads. Heightened concerns over cybersecurity, coupled with an ongoing shortage of cybersecurity professionals, will drive changes to cybersecurity strategies. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cybersecurity analyst career is expected to grow by a whopping 31% between now and 2029. This is much faster than the average of all other careers.

One of the major issues is that cybersecurity is still heavily reliant on human behavior and manual activities such as password entry, as well as human decision-making and reaction. The ‘human factor’ has been identified as the weakest link in the development of safe and secure digital environments. According to a study by IBM, human error is the main cause of 95% of cybersecurity breaches. In the long run, cybersecurity will shift from being human-dependent to being human-focused.

Emerging technologies such as quantum computing, embedded devices, biometrics, and artificial intelligence will all have a significant impact on cybersecurity.

The future of cybersecurity is undeniably artificial intelligence (AI). Humans are incapable of performing detailed and repetitive tasks. AI will aid in the automation of many cybersecurity tasks while also increasing detection, prevention, and anticipatory responses. AI Security technologies that run continuous data analytics on monitored security event data can detect new threats much faster than humans. AI will also play an important role in advising and alerting humans in real time about specific cyber risks.

Quantum computers will be able to solve problems that classical computers are incapable of solving. This will benefit cybersecurity by improving encryption systems as well as detecting complex cyber threats. The race to become the quantum and AI leader has only recently begun, and governments and corporations are making significant investments in the field. Recently, the United States Congress passed a $280 billion technology bill, with the majority of the funds going toward semiconductors, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence.

To return to the password issue, will they vanish? I am afraid not, with the digitalization boom in the last years, we have more passwords than ever before. They will not go away anytime soon, but they will change. We will have more ways to authenticate without them, as well as the ability to combine them with other biometrics data. A futuristic approach identifies human evolution as human-cyborgs, which is a promising approach for securing systems in terms of privacy and security. In the future, we will be more like cyborgs, with embedded chips and devices that will allow us to use alternative authentication mechanisms.

So, the one million dollar question: Does it means that all these new technologies will solve all cybersecurity problems? Actually no, because new cybersecurity risks will evolve as new types of cyberattacks etc. As companies and users update their cybersecurity systems, hackers also learn new ways of attacking. Furthermore, the development of the metaverse, virtual avatars, and digital twins will cause security issues with our virtual humans.

There is no 100% secure system but we can use technology to mitigate most of the common cyber risks. Cybersecurity is something that demands, without a doubt, continuous attention.

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