The Future of Cybersecurity Isn’t What We Expected

We were told that by now, we would live in a perfect world with flying cars. But that hasn’t arrived yet.

We also believed that cybersecurity would be a problem that would have been solved, but it just seems to be getting worse.

But what if the problem isn’t getting worse. What if we have solved cybersecurity and we do have flying cars – we’re just not looking at things in the right way.

I know you’re probably looking at me weird now and someone will invite me to step outside and look up into the sky and point out flying cars. After which they’ll probably point me to a security news site and find a story that doesn’t involve a massive breach or ransomware.

Flying cars may not be here yet, but we do have flying planes which can carry us across oceans in just hours when it used to take days.

Similarly, if we look at cybersecurity, we can see that it has improved greatly over time. While we don’t have a flawless system in place yet, we do have a variety of security-boosting technology at our disposal.

Take remote working for example, it’s relatively easy to support a BYOD environment and allow users to log into their accounts from home or from other devices. Something that was almost inconceivable 10-15 years ago.

Need a SIEM? The days of hiring a small army of consultants to instal, manage, and tune it for you are getting left behind. Nowadays a personal militia will suffice.

No time for a SIEM, why not get a honeypot instead to alert you when it really matters.

Endpoint protection, DLP, easy-to-use and deploy MFA, cybersecurity awareness material on tap… the list goes on and on.

We literally have almost too many choices when it comes to security products that can be relatively affordable with a measurable ROI.

Something else has changed, too, especially in recent times – consumers are more cyber aware than they’ve ever been. We’ve come a long way from spending all day on our social media accounts or watching cat videos on YouTube to individuals actively taking steps to securing their devices and accounts better than they have previously.

We may not have arrived at our desired destination quite yet, but we’ve come a long way from tolerating obnoxious issues from the past. If you don’t believe me, just ask anyone tasked with reviewing IDS logs.

We may not be living in a world with flying cars as we had anticipated, but that isn’t necessarily a negative thing. Cybersecurity may not appear how we imagined it would, and maybe that will turn out to be beneficial too.

We just need to stop looking at things in the short term and remember that advances are not always leaps forward.