By Sameer Malhotra, CEO and co-founder, TrueFort

As we navigated 2024, ransomware attacks surged, often exploiting default or weak passwords, while breaches increasingly featured lateral movement to expand their impact. The year also saw a stronger emphasis on zero trust principles and embedding security earlier in the DevOps lifecycle. These developments shaped the trajectory of enterprise security, providing a foundation for the shifts we can expect in 2025. Here are my top predictions for the year ahead.  

1. Operational Integration Will Define the Next Phase of DevSecOps

• Prediction: As more organizations adopt DevSecOps, the success of this model will hinge on the integration of operations teams. Security will no longer be effective if it doesn't seamlessly integrate with operational processes that prioritize uptime and availability.

• Implications: Security professionals must engage deeply with operations teams to implement protective measures that do not disrupt critical business functions. This collaboration will require a cultural shift, emphasizing joint accountability and the adoption of tools that provide visibility and agility without compromising security.

2. Microsegmentation Will Become Standard Practice

• Prediction: The use of microsegmentation to prevent lateral movement within networks will become a foundational security measure, as traditional perimeter defenses become increasingly inadequate.

• Implications: Security teams will need to gain expertise in deploying microsegmentation solutions and develop robust policies to isolate workloads effectively. This shift will also necessitate investments in training and real-time monitoring capabilities to ensure only necessary traffic is allowed to traverse critical application environments.

3. Microservices-based Controls Will Shift from a Niche Strategy to a Core Security Requirement

• Prediction: Microservices-based controls will become a fundamental component of enterprise security architectures, driven by the need to control communication flows between individual application services in increasingly complex and distributed environments.

• Implications: Security professionals will need to tailor policies to the specific needs and risk profiles of each application, creating highly granular controls that limit lateral movement and contain potential breaches. This shift will require advanced planning and collaboration between security and development teams to ensure that rules do not disrupt application performance or business continuity. Additionally, security teams will need tools that provide visibility into application dependencies and real-time traffic patterns to manage protections effectively.
  

4. Behavioral Baseline Monitoring Will Evolve into a Must-Have

• Prediction: As threat actors become more sophisticated, behavioral baselining will be a critical tool in identifying anomalous activities early, from insider threats to ransomware deployment.

• Implications: Security teams will need to establish and continuously update behavior baselines for users, devices, and applications. The effectiveness of security strategies will depend on real-time adaptation to changing patterns and integrating baselining with automated response mechanisms.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sameer Malhotra is the CEO and visionary co-founder behind TrueFort, an innovator in application-centric enterprise security. Prior to founding TrueFort, Malhotra  spent more than 20 years in senior IT executive roles in the world's top financial institutions, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs. Sameer is widely recognized for his extensive and in-depth knowledge of infrastructure and security, he owns multiple patents in the field and obtained his Master of Science degree in Technology Management from the Stevens Institute of Technology.