What to do now to prepare for the future
Earlier this year, KuppingerCole published Strategic Cybersecurity Recommendations for 2024-2033. Analysts at KuppingerCole conducted scenario-based research on the most critical trends, risks, and opportunities of the next ten years, which yielded the recommendations we present in the paper.
One of the recommendations we make is to know the opposition.
Know the Opposition
The paper identified a range of threats which must be first identified before effective mitigation action can be taken. Taken at a geopolitical level, different countries and regions will have different patterns of development over the next ten years, some taking more protectionist stances and others open and collaborative, with of course many varieties in between. These different environments foster different types of economic development... and crime.
Businesses operating in each environment must strive to understand the malicious actors that thrive in that environment, as well as their motivations. Are the conditions right for lone wolf attacks, state-sponsored attacks, or even corporate-on-corporate attacks? Are they seeking financial gain, disruption, or influence? The answers to these questions should help shape a unique defense strategy.
How to Know
Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) must know the opposition and should seek to do so by understanding the environment and context that cause malicious actors to attack. There are of course many ways to do this. We recommend having incident response plan(s) that address the evolving threats and threat actors, and scenario planning the threats that are particular to your region, industry, and business.
One place to do that is at cyberevolution in Frankfurt, Germany in December this year. There is a track on understanding the opposition, covering quantum threats, threat intelligence, business models behind common attacks, and much more. Take proactive steps to understand the threats by joining the cyberevolution.
