Firstly, Mike Campfield, believes that in 2021, we will see new strains of ransomware as attackers continue to profit. "We will also find new gangs entering the picture and continued development of attack tactics. Following the trend of recent years, Ransomware will set its sights on ever higher value targets in healthcare, institutions of education and financial services. The more things change, the more they stay the same - the essential threat of ransomware is no different. Enterprises will develop workarounds to resist paying the ransom, ransomware continues to be the greatest threat to enterprises. We expect 2021 to produce new victories in the long ransom war."
He also predicts that the future of remote workforce will bring new security headaches for many enterprises. "Now that workers and employers have benefited from remote work, they're going to demand it from their employers. In 2021, remote work will cement its place as a standard part of working life and create a new raft of considerations for enterprise security. How will an enterprise protect their network if endpoints are employee owned constantly on and off the corporate network either from home or in the office. How are enterprises going to protect themselves without the benefit of enterprise security controls? In 2021, the fact of long term remote work is going to force us to rethink how we secure enterprise data and infrastructure."
Hybrid and remote work will be here to stay. That is also the opinion of Ronnen Brunner, who believes the global pandemic has made remote work an absolute necessity. "Given its clear benefits - remote working is likely here to stay in full or at the very least in a hybrid form. Employees love the added flexibility and employers benefit from the increased satisfaction of their employees and the reduced costs associated letting go of expensive office locations. But this new state of being involves a radical change in traditional enterprise IT infrastructure and security. In 2021, enterprises will reap the benefits of remote work, but grapple with how to protect this new architecture which will be heavily cloud/SaaS based."
Brunner also suggest that the economic downturn will lead to cuts in IT expenditure. He says, "The projected economic downturn may mean deep cuts for Enterprise IT. The UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak has recently announced that the UK economy will contract by 11.3%. That means that IT departments may soon experience punishing cuts as enterprises tighten their belts. 2021 will likely mean that IT priorities will have to be re-evaluated and IT security will need to find ways to do more with less and do it quickly - the question on CISOs minds will be how to be leaner and more efficient when it comes to protecting the enterprise."