1. Security awareness

Security awareness has grown significantly in 2016 and continues to grow from mainstream reporting of breaches, vulnerabilities and attacks.

The past election cycle in the US and continued public disclosure of breaches and data leaks has gone a long way towards raising awareness of cyber security issues in the general public.

The human element continues to be the weakest link in the cyber security chain, but this growing awareness will lead to a more vigilant, security-conscious internet populace.

>See also: Gartner picks out top ten cyber security technologies for 2016

2. Shared security intelligence

More and more organisations are starting to participate in security intelligence data sharing. This allows each organisation, and the security community as a whole, to benefit from visibility and intelligence on ‘bad actors’ generated by others.

Rather than a bad actor being individually identified by each organisation as they attempt to gain access, once a bad actor has been identified by one organisation, that intelligence and related information is shared with everyone participating.

This allows the bad actor to be proactively blocked by all other participants, without having to be individually identified, turning any given ‘feed’ of threat intelligence into a global listening post, benefiting all participants.

This trend will only continue to grow, as the practice of proactive intelligence sharing gains further momentum.

3. New and emerging security technologies and techniques

Cyber security has always been an arms race, and that continues today. As attackers and other malicious actors find newer, undiscovered ways to compromise an organisation’s security, cyber security professionals and service providers continue to develop newer, more advanced ways to provide detection and protection.

The advances in this space – in data analysis and correlation specifically – will continue to provide new and innovative ways to consume and utilise threat intelligence and provide advanced protection and visibility.

>See also: Hand in hand: cyber security and industry 4.0

4. Managed security services

Many organisations struggle to develop a security posture and to consistently and effectively implement cyber security processes and functions. In many cases it can be very advantageous to outsource these functions to a managed security services provider.

Use of managed security services has seen significant growth in 2016 and will continue to grow as more and more organisations opt to offload these functions to vendors that focus on cyber security as their core business.

Sourced from Chris Storer, senior systems engineer, VirtualArmour