Predictions in Data Security
Cybersecurity spending will increase in 2019, while breaches will continue to rise as well.
A lot of funding will continue to flow into security strategies that are becoming less and less effective. In a world where physical network boundaries are melting away, many organizations will remain determined to defend them. Others will continue to focus on reactive solutions where detection and response are the emphasis, over proactive solutions which focus on prevention and hardening.
The share of breaches with an insider element will grow.
Currently 50-70% of breaches originate from an accidental or intentional action by someone who has network access, depending on which study you read. That number will increase as bad actors find new ways to target the humans that are part of the network. IT organizations and software providers have been focusing more and more on designing security into their technologies, which has made humans the softer target.
Security teams will continue to rely on outside help not only to maintain their solutions, but to consider new ones.
The talent shortfall in cybersecurity continues and even grows, forcing security teams to look for outside help from service and technology providers. The difficulty this can create is lock-in into specific providers and their perspectives on what makes a worthwhile investment and what doesn’t, contributing to growth in spending and making rationalization and innovation difficult.
Predictions in Blockchain
The definition of blockchain will broaden, and more spin-off technologies will be introduced.
The root concepts inside of blockchain that focus on data integrity and security are valuable in many contexts, but while hundreds to thousands of use cases are being explored, they are being addressed with essentially the same crypto-blockchain technology used to support cryptocurrencies. Expect to see more variants that move beyond slow, public blockchains focused only on transactional ledgers into faster more flexible concepts.
We will begin to see real production level blockchain applications, both privately and within individual organizations.
Most blockchain applications today are experiments awkwardly deployed on crypto-blockchain open source projects that require the adoption by many parties or industries and will potentially take decades to gain traction. In 2019 you will see Blockchain adopted to solve small challenges within smaller systems of trust like individual companies. Some of these solutions will address data security, asset management, supply chain management, identity management and other systems where digital trust needs a solution.
Simultaneously, we will enter the era of blockchain disillusionment.
With cryptocurrencies coming dramatically back to earth, the articles about how this blockchain stuff might have all been hype from the beginning are already starting to be written. Expect the hype to die down while we enter a period where entrepreneurs are leaning into building businesses with blockchain and blockchain spin-off technologies. In the spirit of Gartner’s hype cycle, we will be working our way toward more pragmatic use of blockchain to solve problems only where it makes sense and to evolve the technology to solve those problems in a more appropriate manner.
