Analyst Spotlight
The Key Trends Shaping Security in 2023
Associate Research Director (META), IDC
In 2022, geopolitics was at the forefront of driving cybersecurity initiatives, and cyber-resiliency was one of the hottest cybersecurity strategies being talked about throughout the year. As we transition through 2023, we are still seeing geopolitical-driven cybersecurity trends as businesses are planning their cyber-recovery and cyber-continuation strategies with the issue of digital sovereignty firmly in mind.
Analyst Spotlight
The Key Trends Shaping Security in 2023
Shilpi Handa,Associate Research Director (META), IDC
In 2022, geopolitics was at the forefront of driving cybersecurity initiatives, and cyber-resiliency was one of the hottest cybersecurity strategies being talked about throughout the year. As we transition through 2023, we are still seeing geopolitical-driven cybersecurity trends as businesses are planning their cyber-recovery and cyber-continuation strategies with the issue of digital sovereignty firmly in mind.
While digital sovereignty has placed a sharp focus on in-country IT operation capabilities, this is actually a much broader topic than just data sovereignty. Indeed, across the Middle East, we are increasingly seeing providers adopt strategies that are focused on sovereign clouds.
Another unmissable trend to look out for in 2023 will be the adoption of generative AI within customer security strategies. We are already seeing vendors launch generative AI assistance for security operations, and this will be a groundbreaking trend as it hits directly at the heart of the security skills challenge that the region has been facing for almost half of the last decade. At IDC, we are confident that the adoption of generative AI will positively disrupt the security operations space over the coming years.
The final most promising trend that will shape security in 2023 centers around attack surface management. The rate of IT spending is scaling massively across the region — so much so that it is hard to keep track of digitalization and all the associated assets, including on-premises servers, endpoints, mobiles, cloud, IoT, third-party solutions, and OT devices.
As the proliferation is becoming unmanageable and increasingly complex, there is an absolute need for a uniform attack management strategy, starting right from knowing which assets are in place across the organization and then managing the vulnerabilities and threats across this infrastructure in a continual fashion.
The IDC Qatar IT Security 2023 will look to brainstorm some of these emerging areas and address the issue of security in this new reality.