GLOBAL cybersecurity company Kaspersky said the shift to remote work, financial constraints due to economic recession and the growth of cyberthreats due to the global pandemic will affect the day-to-day role of cybersecurity professionals in 2021.
With this, the firm shared in a report that business owners should focus on protecting, transitioning and training their information technology (IT) professionals in an economy that is rapidly relying on technology to ride the tide as the pandemic continues to disrupt past business models.
“Understanding the challenges but also perceiving opportunities in IT and IT security management is key for companies to maintain their protection,” Kaspersky said.
The recent Kaspersky report dubbed “Plugging the gaps: 2021 corporate IT security predictions” said that one of the main trends to monitor include that protecting the perimeter is no longer enough and home office assessment and certification will be needed.
The firm said there should be tools to scan the level of security in a workplace from the presence of software vulnerabilities to connecting to an unreliable or unprotected Wi-Fi hotspot.
It will also require wider adoption of VPN, privileged access management, multifactor authentication systems, the implementation of stricter monitoring, and the updating of existing contingency and emergency plans.
Transition to a service model will enable required levels of IT and IT security with lower investments.
According to Kaspersky’s survey, seven in 10 (69 percent) businesses said they already plan to use a managed service provider or managed security service provider in the next 12 months.
“This is for good reason as the service model helps to minimize capital investments and transition business costs from CapEx to OpEx,” the firm said.
Training for internal IT security specialists should incorporate management skills. Cybersecurity professions split into very narrow specializations, meaning that hiring staff for each specific role may be too expensive. This is where outsourcing can help plug the gap. However, businesses that outsource key cybersecurity components still need to focus on developing management skills for their in-house teams to handle those outsourced functions, Kaspersky said.
There will be an increased reliance on cloud services, making dedicated management and protection measures necessary.
The survey showed that in 2020, employees in 89 percent of enterprises and 92 percent of small business used non-corporate software and cloud services such as social networks, messengers or other applications. This is unlikely to change when staff return to the office.
To ensure that any corporate data is kept under control, better visibility over cloud access will be necessary. IT security managers will need to align themselves with this cloud paradigm and develop skills for cloud management and protection.
Along with the introduction of new cybersecurity practices, the quality of tools that enable these changes will be equally important. Quality of protection and seamless manageability are key when choosing cybersecurity solutions.
“We have seen two important changes in what customers expect from corporate cybersecurity offerings. Firstly, the quality of protection is no longer up for discussion — now it’s a ‘must have.’ Another major trend is that deep integration between various components of corporate security, ideally from a single vendor, now plays a bigger role,” Alexander Moiseev, chief business officer at Kaspersky, said. (JOB with PR)