Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2023.  Read them in this 15th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

Emerging cybersecurity trends to watch for in 2023

By Ryan Lasmaili, Co-Founder and CEO of Vaultree

This year has seen a massive uptick in ransomware attacks and data breaches, with both private and governmental sectors scrambling to close the cybersecurity gap. The Executive Order on Improving the Nation's Cybersecurity dates back to May 12, 2021, but its implementation has been the most impactful cybersecurity development in 2022. This order marked the first time that both encryption and authentication were mandated by the executive branch.

The roll-out has just begun this year, and will take many years to fully take effect, but it's already making waves throughout corporate America - beginning with larger, regulated industries and corporations, and rippling out to smaller enterprises. Bolstering this governmental focus on cybersecurity, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced on July 6, 2022 the establishment of a Post-Quantum Cryptography Initiative, a project designed to streamline and drive agency efforts to address threats posed by quantum computing.

Here are five cybersecurity predictions that I believe will rise to the forefront of the industry in the coming year:

Mega data breaches won't stop in 2023

Mega data breaches will persist as attackers continue to have the upper hand and outpace victims' attempts to stop them. The breaches will contribute to increased digital supply chain risk. A supply chain attack can breach otherwise strong security measures, and hackers are increasingly aware of this.

Industries with the most antiquated infrastructure, and the least funded cybersecurity, including utilities, energy, manufacturing, construction, wholesale/retail, banking and healthcare, will continue to be the most vulnerable to attacks. We can also expect to see major libraries and code bases compromised in the near future.

Innovative encryption technologies will gain traction

Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs), including homomorphic, searchable and data-in-use encryption, will gain more visibility in the media globally, pushed through higher investments in the field and broader market adoption and general use cases in the private sector. Effective innovations, such as fully functional data-in-use encryption, offered by specialized solution providers will drive interest in a market saturated by ineffective technologies and tools.

Initial post quantum cryptography (PQC) implementations and early solutions will make some headlines, as will quantum key distribution (QKD) solutions. One QKD that is poised to be particularly impactful is the Qrypt solution, which generates identical symmetric keys at multiple endpoints without any distribution of the keys themselves over an insecure channel.

CISOs will embrace PETs

Forward thinking CISOs will need to cut through the noise and avoid being flooded with sales attempts of inadequate tools. Implementing new software aimed at protecting data can take years, and can be a very costly endeavor, requiring time-consuming changes to the infrastructure.

The most effective option for CISOs to prevent data leaks, is to leverage modern PETs in the form of a practical, performant, applicable, nimble and simple toolkit like the one Vaultree has developed. With data in a persistent state of encryption - even when breaches happen and firewalls and other tools in the first line of defense fail -  leaked data is undecipherable and therefore useless to hackers.

The rise and fall of consolidation

Companies will become increasingly disillusioned and frustrated with the complicated cloud and enterprise security solutions. This will accelerate the nascent trend of consolidation. Standalone solutions, especially those without a sustainable business model, will begin to collapse and get swallowed by bigger vendors, who, on their end, will build integrated "one-stop-shop" security service platforms.

Consolidation may not have lasting power however, as consolidated systems inevitably become too broad and complex and begin to break down to independent pieces. This process is a perennially sinusoid cycle in our industry.

Zero Trust makes gains

Zero Trust cloud security architectures have become more mainstream and will be increasingly popular in 2023. The pandemic accelerated the concept's adoption by many organizations and 2022 saw it become more popular as a security architecture for a modern remote workforce.

Conclusion

There are still plenty of threats to cybersecurity on the horizon in 2023, but new policies and innovative encryption technologies - such as fully functional data-in-use encryption - are emerging to fight the good fight against data breaches and leaks.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ryan Lasmaili is Co-Founder and CEO of Vaultree, the world's first Fully Functional Data-in-Use Encryption solution that solves the industry's fundamental security issue: persistent data encryption, even in the event of a leak. Vaultree enables enterprises, including those in the financial services and healthcare / pharmaceutical sectors, to mitigate the great financial, cyber, legal, reputational, and business risk of a data breach in plain text. Ryan's background is in financial mathematics with a passion for astrophysics and economics. Ryan is always looking for ways to solve major cybersecurity problems with his biggest undertaking to date solving today's and tomorrow's data encryption and protection challenges.