5 Cyber Trends to Expect in 2024

The past year certainly had no shortage of cybersecurity firsts. From the emergence of the MOVEit vulnerability to the wide adoption of ChatGPT and its associated security risks, nearly every industry was impacted by cyber threats. These major trends throughout the year have kept security professionals on their toes—pushing practitioners to stop playing defense against malicious actors and shift to a more proactive approach to security.  

As we look toward 2024, some aspects will remain the same, such as persistent ransomware and cloud-based attacks, as well as AI creating a larger attack vector for cybercriminals. The shift, however, will be in how the cybersecurity industry—and specifically, IT security vendors—helps customers transition to being more proactive against cyber threats. We asked our global team to weigh in on the trends they anticipate shaping the new year and what will help push the need for proactive security. Here’s what they had to say.

AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) are at the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

What we saw with AI and LLMs, and given the amount of investment that has gone into progressing this technology, I expect to see rapid innovation in all aspects of LLM usage in 2024—specifically at the foundational level, such as scale and efficiency. More importantly, we will see the emergence of very impactful use cases in industry verticals such as healthcare, learning, manufacturing, and automation.   

We will also see increased adoption of LLMs for the edge—LLMs, and AI will go where the data resides or is generated as opposed to aggregating all the data to a centralized location. This adoption will accelerate exponentially in addressing some of society’s most complex and urgent problems. Furthermore, I expect more solutions and regulations to emerge to grant organizations the confidence and guidance they need to use these powerful tools effectively and in a trustworthy manner.” 

The best security program requires a combination of purpose-built, automated technology and human intuition and intelligence.

“We’re still facing a deficit of cybersecurity professionals globally. The skills shortage will ultimately be the bottleneck impacting the effectiveness of cybersecurity initiatives. Additionally, budgets and investments into proactive security training and procurement are being put on hold, so businesses, in turn, are limiting their ability to improve their cybersecurity posture. That needs to flip in 2024 as organizations that fail to keep pace with the rate of transformation in the industry will inevitably falter, as the human element is still the weakest link in today’s cyber ecosystem.”

A politically focused year will spark more nation-state attacks.

“As we enter 2024, notably an election year for many, political situations will likely lead to more nation-state attacks against critical and national infrastructure. A politically focused year, along with increasing usage of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), will require businesses to lean towards establishing strong and efficient spending, along with more software-based solutions that empower an ‘always on’ mindset to combat today’s threat landscape.”

Regulations will continue to progress, but insider threats remain the biggest roadblock to securing the software supply chain.

“The U.S. has made strides in cybersecurity legislation and guidance in 2023. Most notably, CISA announced its Open-Source Software (OSS) security roadmap, and the U.S. partnered with Japan, India, and Australia to strengthen software security for governments. Collaborative work like this will drive security forward for nations that may not have security maturity. 

The new SEC guidelines are essential in the evolving cybersecurity landscape. The SEC puts more pressure on organizations to create more robust security practices. Even though regulations are not always flawless, such as the guidelines requiring disclosures within four days of an incident being declared ‘material.’ This short time frame could open up loopholes regarding incident categorization; however, it’s a step in the right direction. In the new year, I would expect more urgency in legislation, including continued pressure on software suppliers themselves, to keep up with the ever-increasing risk of the software supply chain.”

Teams must keep pace with digital transformation to ensure cloud security.

“Across industries, even with workloads shifting to the cloud, organizations suffer from technical debt and improper IT team training – causing poorly implemented and architected cloud migration strategies. In 2024, IT teams will look to turn this around and keep pace with the technical skills needed to secure digital transformations. Specifically, I expect to see IT teams limit account user access to production cloud environments and monitor configurations for drift to help identify potential problems introduced with code changes.  

Every cloud provider has, more or less, experienced public difficulties with remediation efforts and patches taking a long time. I anticipate seeing organizations switch to a more flexible deployment model in the new year that allows for faster shifts between cloud providers due to security issues or unexpected changes in pricing. Microsoft’s recent ‘Secure Future Initiative’ is just the start to rebuild public trust in the cloud.”  

The year 2024 will undoubtedly be a rollercoaster for the cybersecurity industry, but we hope these insights help organizations get on the offense and remain vigilant against growing threats. Here’s to a more secure, collaborative, and proactive new year!