Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2024.  Read them in this 16th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

Reporting Becomes a Focal Point to Connect IT and Business Operations

By Nick Scozzaro, co-founder and CEO of ShadowHQ, an incident preparedness and response technology company

It will come as no surprise to IT and security teams that skillset shortages are affecting core competencies and tools management. To compensate, we're seeing a functional crossover, where historically siloed technical and business functions are teaming up to help offset operational spending and address risk management. It's a do more with less approach that kind of erases departmental boundaries - we're seeing risk management permeate all areas of the business.

Compliance and cyber insurance have been top of mind, but more so from a collaborative perspective to simultaneously address business continuity, IR and remediation planning, while satisfying compliance and cyber insurance requirements with limited internal resourcing and more cohesive tooling.

Expect collaboration to strengthen into next year due to these influences:

Stronger security posture legislation - The SEC's recent reporting amendment is setting a precedent for all companies with respect to incident reporting. As the SEC ramps enforcement of its reporting requirements, companies will be motivated to ensure that their own reporting processes functionally meet industry standard requirements.

Insurability isn't guaranteed - Cyber insurers are altering policy issuance and renewal requirements due to increasing payouts and their own risk mitigation. Cyber insurance questionnaires are becoming a cross-functional exercise, which is helping to ease internal audits and questionnaire processes.

Security teams will feel the impact of AI-assisted toolsets - Obviously security and IT professionals are leveraging AI more - in that vein we're expecting to see AI assisted response used more heavily in IR to cut through chaos and confusion. Incident response volumes aren't going down, so reducing dependency on human recollection and their ability to collect right info at the right time will improve overall response times, and help practitioners make informed decisions. AI's greatest benefits in IR processes will improve speed to attack recognition, and best practice prompts that help guide and expedite event response.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

With over 20 years in secure communications and high tech, Nick is a visionary who understands how technology changes the way we live and do business. Having been a part of the incredible journey that changed the way the world communicates at BlackBerry, Nick continues to apply his experience and use technology as an enabler for organizations to stand ready against risks that threaten to disrupt business operations and way of life.