Reimagining enterprise cybersecurity in 2023

Business success in today’s cybersecurity environment depends on agile strategies, prioritising and deprioritising cybersecurity approaches that best align with short-term and long-term objectives. This newfound security awareness has emerged after devastating cyber attacks over the years, and a long list of challenges businesses continue to face.

Many businesses still heavily rely on outdated legacy systems and siloed processes that result in difficulties in technology overlapping, disparate machinery, and exposure to cyber vulnerabilities. Access to vital business data such as consumers’ Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and Intellectual Property Data (IPR) via cloud technologies presents another set of challenges that businesses often need help navigating. Cybercriminals exploit these security gaps, causing loss or damage to critical business data. Distributed workforce due to the remote work culture, a combination of persistent insider threats, cloud infrastructure misuse, and sophisticated attacks are other contributing factors that hinder enterprise growth and development.

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Source: Various providers of tax, audit, and security research

According to our cybersecurity consultants, here’s what reimagining enterprise security looks like in 2023.

As enterprises move from silos to collaborative platforms, fortifying the operational technology side becomes imperative. Therefore, it has to start with a basic hygiene approach considering both Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) sides. In addition, OT-IT convergence must embed cognitive security strategies in the establishment phase as it has become necessary in the current threat landscape.

Increased cloud migration and investments in cloud collaboration tools have opened new avenues for doing business. Despite initial scepticism about security concerns, it has proved to be the most favourable tool for enterprises to modernise their operations and gain cyber resilience. The only thing to note is the constant strife that enterprises face in striking a balance between ease of cloud access and usage and necessary security controls.

The surge in social engineering and cybercrime-as-a-service paints a worrying picture for enterprises. Cyber attackers are taking it a notch higher through conniving methods such as joining hands with weak-link employees, advanced execution in addition to data poisoning, whaling, business email compromise attacks, etc. Such sophisticated attacks can be thwarted even before the start phase itself. Enterprises must proactively pursue cognitive risk assessments that deploy Artificial intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Big data, and other emergent industry 5.0 technologies that can detect anomalies in cyber behaviour across verticals and give warnings if something’s wrong.

Security practitioners are viewing Multifactor Authentication (MFA) with a fresher perspective, and it is getting a new makeover altogether. Cybercriminals are quickly catching up with two-factor and multifactor authentication, forcing security leaders to devise innovative password verification methods. In addition, an enhanced focus is being given to end-to-end data encryption, which ensures complete data privilege and protection. It ensures that data remains coded and inaccessible even after being stolen, making it difficult to decipher by rogue elements.

Technology is already making waves, with cloud services supported by complex infrastructure and compliance best practices, ensuring maximum compatibility, protection, and versatility. With payments becoming contactless and cashless, earlier encryption-key-based authentication is being quickly replaced by Remote Key Loading (RKL) in enterprises to develop and deploy POS solutions, offering easier and safer encryption management. As workplaces turn hybrid, 70% of enterprises are already accelerating their Zero Trust Network Authentication (ZTNA). Anticipatory risk prediction is gradually becoming enterprises' sixth pillar of cybersecurity assessment. Through cognitive capabilities, businesses can predict any level of advanced attack even before it occurs.

In an increasingly challenging landscape and expansion of surface attacks, enterprises must fill in their security gaps for business continuity and sustained growth. Adopting a cybersecurity-first culture as a business objective, formulating and implementing risk governance-centric KPIs, and implementing enterprise-wide cyber safety practices will go a long way in helping enterprises achieve the desired cyber resilience and growth.