As cybersecurity threats evolve rapidly, Gartner has identified the key trends shaping the landscape for 2024.
These trends, including Generative AI (GenAI), employee behavior, third-party risks, continuous threat exposure, boardroom communication gaps, and identity-first approaches to security, will be explored at the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit scheduled for March 18-19 in Sydney.
Richard Addiscott, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, in its research report, emphasized the significance of GenAI and other emerging challenges.
“GenAI is occupying significant headspace of security leaders as another challenge to manage, but also offers an opportunity to harness its capabilities to augment security at an operational level,” Richard Addiscott said. Despite GenAI’s potential, leaders must also address external factors beyond their control.
In response to these challenges, security leaders are expected to adopt various practices, technical capabilities, and structural reforms within their security programs to enhance organizational resilience and performance.
Here are the six key cybersecurity trends for 2024:
# 1. Generative AI – Short-term Skepticism, Longer-Term Hope GenAI is evolving swiftly, with applications like ChatGPT and Gemini marking just the beginning of its disruption. While promising productivity increases and skills gap reductions, Gartner advises cautious collaboration with business stakeholders to ensure the ethical and secure use of this technology.
# 2. Cybersecurity Outcome-Driven Metrics: Bridging Boardroom Communication Gap The adoption of outcome-driven metrics (ODMs) is increasing to demonstrate the direct impact of cybersecurity investment on protection levels, enabling clearer communication with non-IT executives.
# 3. Security Behavior and Culture Programs Gain Traction Focusing on behavioral change rather than mere awareness, security behavior and culture programs (SBCPs) are gaining prominence to mitigate human-induced cybersecurity risks.
# 4. Resilience-Driven, Resource-Efficient Third-Party Cybersecurity Risk Management Security leaders are shifting towards resilience-oriented investments and establishing robust relationships with third-party partners to enhance cybersecurity risk management.
# 5. Continuous Threat Exposure Management Programs Gain Momentum Continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) enables organizations to continually evaluate vulnerabilities across digital and physical assets, leading to a significant reduction in breaches.
# 6. Extending the Role of Identity & Access Management (IAM) With organizations prioritizing an identity-first approach to security, IAM plays a crucial role in improving cybersecurity outcomes by focusing on fundamental hygiene and system hardening.
