FEATURE: CIO PRIORITIES
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
AND MACHINE LEARNING WILL
PLAY A SIGNIFICANT ROLE IN
HELPING EMPLOYEES WORK
MORE PRODUCTIVELY.
architectures, with the need to establish rich
data starting to drive IT investments.
Fortinet, a global leader in cybersecurity
solutions, has unveiled predictions from
the FortiGuard Labs team about the threat
landscape for 2019 which CIOs need to be
aware of.
These predictions reveal methods and
techniques that Fortinet researchers
anticipate cybercriminals will employ in the
near future, along with important strategy
changes that will help organisations defend
against these oncoming attacks.
“We are seeing significant advances in
cybercriminal tools and services which
leverage automation and the precursors of
AI,” said Derek Manky, Chief, Security Insights
and Global Threat Alliances, Fortinet.
Paul Potgieter, Managing Director – UAE,
Dimension Data, said: “Across the GCC
and Middle East, Blockchain, Artificial
Intelligence, robotics, Big Data, analytics and
cloud are becoming increasingly connected
with Digital Transformation initiatives.
“Rather than engaging in a perpetual
arms race, organisations need to embrace
automation and AI to shrink the windows
from intrusion-to-detection and from
detection-to-containment.
“Whether it is government, public sector or
the private sector, enterprises are initiating
projects that have longer term implications in
terms of transitioning to new business models
and innovative customer experiences.
“Regional enterprises have begun to
realise that true return on investments can
be realised by blending transformative
technologies based on creating new business
models and adding net new customers. The
GCC and Middle East regions have already
embarked on their transformative journeys
and we expect the pace to pick up from 2019
and further into the end of the decade.”
Security predictions
Marcio Saito, CTO of Opengear
reality for most IT managers. This is a long-
term and gradual trend, but a clear shift in
awareness is hitting now. The move towards
the edge is obviously a positive trend for
Opengear’s OOB (Out-of-Band) business.”
Software-defined Wide-Area
Networking
“This can be achieved by integrating security
elements into a cohesive security fabric that
dynamically shares threat information for
broad protection and visibility across every
network segment from IoT to multi-clouds.”
In an effort to adapt to the increased use of
Machine Learning and automation, Fortinet
predicts cybercriminals are likely to adopt
strategies such as: Artificial Intelligence
Fuzzing (AIF), Zero-Day Mining Using AIF,
Swarm-as-a-Service and A-la-Carte Swarms.
Moving towards the edge
Opengear, which offers network monitoring,
data centre and IT infrastructure
management solutions for secure remote
access, predicts in the next decade we will
see more data being processed at the edge.
It predicts consumers will be interacting
with IT using either more sophisticated
devices (be it self-driving cars, drones, AR/VR
headsets, AI, rich interactive interfaces) or
more dispersed and numerous devices (IoT
sensors and actuators, smart tags, etc.)
Marcio Saito, CTO of Opengear, said: “In
2019 we will take a step further in the
realisation that ‘edge’ is no longer just an
analyst vision, but an increasingly concrete
46
INTELLIGENTCIO
Opengear also predicts 2019 is the year
where every single enterprise managing
remote branch connectivity will be looking at
SD-WAN deployments.
“The cost and resiliency differences between
old-school WAN networking using MPLS
circuits and access routers and SD-WAN are
clear and compelling,” said Saito.
“While a traditional access router can be
deployed and go untouched for months
or even years, in SD-WAN, the software
components are updated continuously
from the cloud. Compared to traditional
networking, this is convenient and secure,
but is still dependent on the stability of WAN
links and remote physical infrastructure.”
To counteract these developments,
organisations will need to continue to raise
the bar in tackling cybercriminals. Each of
the following defensive strategies will have
an impact on cybercriminal organisations,
forcing them to change tactics, modify
attacks and develop new ways to assess
opportunities. The cost of launching their
attacks will escalate, requiring criminal
developers to either spend more resources
for the same result, or find a more accessible
network to exploit.
Defensive strategies
Advanced Deception Tactics: Integrating
deception techniques into security
strategies to introduce network variations
www.intelligentcio.com