The future of cybersecurity is as an enabler of innovation

Organisations are shifting their cybersecurity strategies from reactive to agile, and must view cybersecurity as an enabler of innovation.

That's the view of Matthew Gyde, Dimension Data group executive for security, who says organisations are no longer simply reacting to cyber threats, but instead are creating agile, adaptive IT infrastructures – and even entire enterprises so that cyber breaches are addressed before they happen.

He says organisations must shift away from fear-based cybersecurity to opportunity-based cybersecurity.

"Perimeter-based cybersecurity today won't be sufficient to carry organisations into the future," Gyde says.

"In addition, in today's digital world, data sharing is essential to the creation of new digital business products such as web apps and mobile apps, which integrate customer information, through an application programme interface.

"However, opening company data up is risky too, which is forcing leaders to balance the risk and reward of new digital business value, with the cost of creating properly secured systems," he says.

"Organisation that do well at securing their data will be more likely to take on the daring innovations their competitors won't risk," Gyde adds.

He says right now enterprises are beginning to see the future opportunities of cybersecurity in the digital world coming into focus, but many are still trying to keep their legacy systems stable and secure.

He provides an overview of what he believes the landscape will look like in the next five years, and over the next 10 years:

Just ahead

• As threats become more frequent, more sophisticated, and more dangerous, organisations begin to struggle with managing cybersecurity on their own. The needs are too complex to be managed by the general IT department, and there simply aren't enough information security professionals to go around.
• In the next two to five years, entirely new ways of storing, sharing, and using data will require a major shift in how enterprises think about identity, value, and security.
• It will soon be commonplace for data to move laterally from one company's applications and servers to another and back, 100s - even1000s - of times per user action across a diverse set of network and application environments. In this environment, perimeter-based cybersecurity isn't effective, so the dataitself must be secured as it moves.
• Cybersecurity at the user level is evolving towards this as well, with a shift to tokens, authentication, and single sign-on (SSO). 
• To manage risk and security in the near future, companies must focus on balancing the need for rapid innovation with the cost of modernising and securing legacy IT systems.
• Increasing cloud adoption will require that all organisations manage endpoint security, while some new applications will need to secure the data itself and make it safe from attack.

On the horizon

• Over the next 10 years, and beyond, enterprises will evolve rapidly, taking full advantage of opportunities for digital innovation, and working together to secure the clouds of data that have become essential for business and daily life.
• Agile organisations that have mastered the security of their systems will have a competitive advantage, and will be able to selectively unlock and extrapolate data for enormous societal and individual benefit.
• The edges of the organisation will become increasingly less relevant as significant strategic partnerships form between digitised companies.
• It's likely that organisations who take the lead in exploring new digital business models and offerings – autonomous vehicle companies, for example – will become targets for increasingly skilled cybercriminals. These organisations will need new, agile strategies for managing and designing secure IT to manage the risks that come with accelerated innovation and evolution.