Cybersecurity Trends for 2019 — The Good and The Bad

2019 will be the most security-conscious year yet, with the general public more concerned and enterprise spending on defense and research growing relentlessly. However, for innovative and emerging technologies, security will also present new challenges to organizations large and small. The status quo of speed and functionality being chosen over security to address competition is highly likely to continue, and boards and corporate leaders need to be continually convinced as to the importance of security as part of strategic business objectives.

What is becoming more of a challenge? What is alleviating some of the burden on enterprises? For those looking forward, and for those looking to find or build solutions, these are the cybersecurity trends to watch for 2019.

Necessary Speed and Agility Changes Aide Increasingly Secure Rapid Delivery

According to a recent survey[1] by Veracode, 52% of developers are concerned that an increase in application security will pose a threat to development and deadlines.

A house built on a shaky foundation will not stand up for long, just as software cannot truly be secure in an operational state if it was not originally built securely. Unfortunately, the extra time and effort that is needed to create secure software from the ground up is still a hard-sell.

In an ideal world, developers would all be security experts who coded everything as securely as possible, and management would understand and accept the need to spend extra resources to achieve a secure operational state by design. We know this is not the case today, so DevSecOps is one agility concept that helps incorporate security during development, without “tacking on” security at the end of a release cycle.

By accelerating the security audit process, secure development can be validated for assurance much faster. Through automation and the DevSecOps model, security is thus better able to keep up with frequent iterations with increased assurance.

Another concept that can help maintain speed and agility is not new, but it also is not frequently used in most industries: Design thinking.