Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2022.  Read them in this 14th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

The Continued Convergence of Network and Security Visibility Drives 2022 Predictions

By John Smith, CTO and Co-Founder of LiveAction

The technology landscape has changed dramatically over the past year due to the pandemic. Even though we're hopeful that lessens in 2022, the impacts of remote and hybrid workers will be felt for much longer (if not forever). As a result, networking and security have become more closely aligned, especially when it comes to visibility. This year, my predictions attempt to blend these two disciplines together since they'll heavily influence one another. Let's dive in. 

Prediction #1 - Patching Gaps Following Disclosures Will Drive Increased Ransomware Attacks As Hackers "Go Back to The Well Over and Over."

Ransomware continues to increase and is only getting more complex. In fact, according to Trend Micro report, ransomware attacks increased by 1,318% in banking industry alone (through the first half of 2021). In 2022, we expect to see this increase continue, further fueled by patching gaps following disclosures that allow attackers to weaponize vulnerabilities quickly. Specifically, assets with critical production workloads are often those that cannot immediately be patched (due to change control programs) - leaving vulnerable assets in a state of increased risk between a vulnerability disclosure and the accompanying patch.

On average, it takes organizations 205 days to patch vulnerable software and systems following disclosure (according to WhiteHat Security). Threat actors see this long runway as an opportunity to "go back to the well" over and over during the patching void period. We expect to see increases in phishing, insecure remote access, and exploited public-facing vulnerabilities from hackers as they look to identify lucrative data on the network to encrypt and exfiltrate for ransom. This makes accelerated patching crucial. But it also increases the value of Network Detection and Response (NDR) solutions that can help prevent these sorts of attacks using advanced detection capabilities, encrypted traffic analysis, behavioral traffic analysis, and streaming machine learning. This allows security teams to detect the anomalous behavior, assess risk and achieve the operational resiliency needed to stop ransomware, even if patching vulnerabilities exist.

Prediction #2 - Organizations Will Finally Achieve Multi-Cloud Visibility for NetOps and SecOps by Embracing Network Performance Monitoring Solutions That See into Encrypted Traffic.

Accelerated digital transformation has propelled the move to cloud and SaaS applications. Cloud provider selection is now being driven more by business outcomes instead of IT requirements, forcing a diverse multi-cloud environment. This is creating big visibility challenges for NetOps teams as they're tasked to deliver optimized performance securely. In 2022, IT operations will finally adopt a single source of visibility for application performance management and network security that will allow NetOps and SecOps teams to be truly aligned. This will likely come in the form of network performance monitoring solutions that are adding security functionality, like the ability to see into encrypted traffic (or NDR solutions).

Prediction #3 - Zero Trust Network Access Becomes the New Zero Trust Buzzword, For Good Reason.

Zero Trust continues to drive the security conversation and has become the buzzword of 2021. And probably for good reason. While basically a rehashing of least privilege concepts, it's helping to raise security awareness within organizations. So much so that the White House released an Executive Order (Section 3) earlier this year around the concept. But many organizations are not familiar with the role networking monitoring plays in a Zero Trust Architecture, which includes using enhanced identity governance, micro-segmentation, and Zero Trust Network Access (or ZTNA). As we roll into 2022, and organizations continue to embrace SDN and SASE, IT operations teams will become increasingly familiar with ZTNA, which is basically a fancy term for software-defined perimeters. ZTNA is critical for delivering secure connectivity to private applications without putting them on the network or exposing them to the internet.

Prediction #4 - SD-WAN in SASE Will Continue on a Collision Course.

As SD-WAN adoption continues, security is becoming an increasingly larger part of the conversation. In 2022, expect to see SD-WAN and SASE collide as organizations work to deploy SASE solutions that fit into their SD-WAN deployment models. This will create challenges around picking the right solutions that will fit into the larger SASE strategy. If an organization already owns SD-WAN assets, for example, how will they leverage them into a larger SASE deployment, especially around architecture, interoperability, training, and management? There are many complexities associated with connecting a wide-ranging set of users and areas including remote workers, company sites and multi cloud. This will also put pressure on SecOps and NetOps to work more closely together with common visibility and analytics platform that can help with ongoing monitoring and management. Furthermore, network monitoring vendors will be asked to deliver more capabilities. Specifically, around application performance and security, such as integrated SD-WAN and multi cloud monitoring, end-to-end diagnostics (as applications traverse network segments that are geographically dispersed), and integrated security features like encrypted traffic analysis and forensic analysis capabilities that fit into edge, on premises and SD-WAN deployments.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Smith is CTO, EVP and founder of LiveAction and previously served as VP of Engineering at Spirent where he was responsible for $150M+ revenue per year product line with over 140 engineers. John has been in networking and software development for over 25 years with companies such as Boeing, Phoenix Technologies and Referentia. John holds 6 patents developed under LiveAction in the areas of network management and visualizations. John holds a MS in computer science and research towards his PhD in machine learning using genetic algorithms for autonomous navigation.