Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2020.  Read them in this 12th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

By Reuven Harrison, CTO, Tufin

Prepare for Unified Platforms and Encryption Wars

As 2020 brings the dawn of a new decade, many of the traditional security problems that have plagued enterprises over the past ten years will not be going away any time soon. Even as attacks and security protections have become more advanced, unfortunately, one of the most prevalent security issues in 2019 remained ransomware. It just goes to show that if something works, people will continue to exploit it for as long as they can. 

Automation Continues to Increase, While Voice Attacks Grow

Last year, we predicted the acceleration of security automation across all industries - something that we've seen continue to expand - and can expect will be adopted even more in 2020. We also spoke about breaches utilizing voice and personal assistants - which we've seen take hold a bit towards the end of the year, especially with recent horror stories about hackers accessing security cameras and smart home systems. There is no way we don't hear more of these stories next year.

Below are a few new predictions for 2020 based on what we've been seeing in the industry over the past year:

The Emergence of The Enterprise Cloud

With all cloud providers now focused on the enterprise, we will see a shift in cloud technology. Up until now, there was a clear distinction between the private cloud and the public cloud - and each featured different technologies and vendors.

In 2020, cloud providers will create a unified platform that spans private and public environments. Kubernetes will be the leading solution to enable this because its "overlay" nature enables uniform deployment across private and public platforms. We're already seeing Google, RedHat (now IBM) and VMware all betting on this as a core element of their strategy - and others will follow.

Enterprise DevOps Extend Into The Wider Enterprise

Developers have been leveraging and maturing the advantages of DevOps for several years.

This includes practices like test automation, continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD), immutable infrastructure and infrastructure as code. Historically, these practices have enabled superior business agility and quality, among other advantages such as continuous security.

Now, these practices will extend beyond R&D into the wider enterprise - and they will be used to compliment traditional enterprise change management processes. Enterprises that will be open and smart about adopting such practices will see greater business agility in 2020 over competitors that maintain traditional IT processes.

The Encryption Wars Will Continue

Encrypted connections (SSL which has evolved to TLS) was Initially a best-practice for online payments in the 1990s and is now expected in every web connection.

However, end-to-end encryption also prevents organizations and authorities from enforcing their policies - and as a result, end-to-end encryption has been consistently broken with man-in-the-middle (MITM) technology that inspects outbound traffic and ensures it complies with the policy. This is a double-edged sword, as it gives authorities not only the ability to protect their users but also to control them.

Encryption limitations are now being widely applied, but technology is consistently shutting down the gaps with initiatives like DNS encryption, HTTP/3 and Certificate Pinning. As the encryption war continues to evolve - the enterprises and security vendors who will win in 2020 will be those that find and maintain a good balance between user privacy and security policy.

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About the Author

 

Reuven Harrison is CTO and Co-Founder of Tufin (NYSE: TUFN). He led all development efforts during the company's initial fast-paced growth period, and is focused on Tufin's product leadership. Reuven is responsible for the company's future vision, product innovation and market strategy. Under Reuven's leadership, Tufin's products have received numerous technology awards and wide industry recognition.

Reuven brings more than 20 years of software development experience, holding two key senior developer positions at Check Point Software, as well other key positions at Capsule Technologies and ECS. He received a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Philosophy from Tel Aviv University.