How will the cybersecurity threat landscape evolve in 2017? Gad you asked. Here are ChannelE2E’s Top 10 Cybersecurity Predictions for 2017, and the potential implications for VARs, MSPs, CSPs and other types of channel partners.
10. Thanks But No Thanks: Silicon Valley will respectfully -- but firmly -- ignore recent cybersecurity recommendations from a U.S. presidential commission. The Obama administration has asked the commission to brief President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team at their earliest convenience. But ironically, former CIA Director Michael Hayden a few days ago said the U.S. government will always be late to the cybersecurity scene.
9. Consumer IoT Will Attack Corporate IoT (More Frequently): Businesses will begin to lock down smart devices, sensors and other Internet of Things (IoT) items. But consumers will remain the weak link, continuing to buy low-cost connected devices that are poorly programmed or lack proper patches. Hackers will harness millions of those devices, transforming them into botnets at a moment's notice.
8. Ransomware Will Go Cloud: You know about ransomware on PCs and servers. But it will also infect cloud data centers -- across physical and/or virtualized workloads. The big question: Will individual customers within the cloud data centers cough up the ransom -- or will the cloud data center provider be liable for the security setback?
7. Compliance Could Get Easier (Or Not): President-elect Donal Trump plans to strike down two regulations for ever new regulation that enters the market. That's his way of saying we're heading toward a world with fewer business regulations. Among the regulations that could die: The Dodd-Frank Act, which was designed to protect consumers after the 2008 financial meltdown. Critics allege Dodd-Frank is too complex to work.
6. Hackers Will Hijack Machine Learning: Security companies increasingly leverage big data and machine learning systems to rapidly discover and mitigate threats. But thanks to cloud services, it's easier and easier for hackers to plug into low-cost machine learning and big data systems as well...
5. Attacks Will Extend from Cyber to Physical Infrastructure: State-sponsored attacks will spill over from IT systems into the physical world -- threatening and perhaps even disabling transportation systems, power and energy grids, building locks, ventilation systems and plenty more...
4. NOCs Become SOCs: Major network operations centers (NOCs) will extend into Security Operations Centers (SOCs) or spin-off SOC operations that monitor physical and virtual security for customers.
3. Standards, Please: Respected standards bodies like IEEE will move into an even brighter spotlight. Industry and the U.S. government will call on vendor-neutral researchers to close some of the most glaring IoT, cloud, network and mobile security gaps.
2. Insource or Outsource?: As security challenges become more complex, SMB channel partners will be particularly challenged. Instead of trying to master end-to-end IT security services, channel partners will increasingly embrace white label IT security and outsourced support services.
1. Cloud Beats On-Premises: The last cloud critics will finally admit the obvious -- overall, public cloud systems are more secure than on-premises IT infrastructure. The reason? Cloud service provider (CSP) economies of scale can't be matched.
Note: ChannelE2E is running 2017 technology predictions throughout the month of December 2016. Submit predictions for consideration to [email protected]. Read all daily predictions here.
