There are quite a few predictions out there for 2016, obviously some appear more interesting than others. I picked three that I could have an impact on what we do:

1- Cybersecurity Skill Shortage

I don't think this one is really that new since it has been on the radar for some time now. Depending who you ask and where you live, most predictions estimate up to several hundred of thousand positions will remain unfilled by the end of 2016.

2- Growing Number of Devices on the Internet

According to Gartner [1], they predict there will be up to 6.8 billion device in use in 2016 a whopping 30% increase from last year. That is a lot of devices to support, maintain and protect. This might have the biggest impact for those of us working in cybersecurity. Do you see your workload increase this year?

3- Cybercrime continue to Thrive

With traditional network, you have control of both the entry and exit point of the network, however, when the data move into the cloud, this type of control is lost. As more data move to the cloud, the task to protect and control the data based on organization boundaries is no longer possible. What could be worst, cyber criminals use the resources you pay for to attack other organization (i.e. looks like the attack comes from your organization). According to a McAfee, "More than 70% think cybersecurity threats to their organization are escalating".[2]

What are you the most concerned with this coming year?

[1] http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3165317
[2] http://www.mcafee.com/ca/resources/reports/rp-threats-predictions-2016.pdf

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Guy Bruneau IPSS Inc.
Twitter: GuyBruneau
gbruneau at isc dot sans dot edu