Key technology trends that will shape Australian business in 2022

Monday, 20 December 2021 15:24

Key technology trends that will shape Australian business in 2022

By Steve Singer, regional vice president and ANZ country manager, Zscaler

Steve Singer, regional vice president and ANZ country manager, Zscaler

GUEST OPINION: Battered and bruised from the harsh realities of COVID lockdowns, Australian businesses are looking forward to what they hope will be a much better year ahead.

With restrictions easing and economic life showing positive signs, strategies are being drawn up to guide future growth. A key part of this process involves formulating plans for cybersecurity IT investment and deployments.

There are a number of key trends that appear likely to influence these new technology plans during 2022. They will have an impact on where funding should be allocated, and which projects should be given priority.

The trends include:

Ransomware attacks will continue to grow

The threats posed by ransomware will continue to be significant for organisations of all sizes. Attackers have found the technique can be both lucrative and disruptive for victims.

The problem has been amplified by the emergence of a Ransomware-as-a-service market in which ready-made malware payloads can be purchased by any willing buyer. This has served to increase the volume of attacks and the range of businesses being targeted.

Recent incidents of ransomware targeting supply chains are particularly concerning. When executed, they mean a single breach can have an impact on hundreds or thousands of end users. Unfortunately, the situation is only going to get worse in 2022.

SaaS and IaaS monitoring will improve

Software and infrastructure-as-a-service offerings are proving increasingly attractive for Australian businesses. They remove the need for up-front capital investments and shift technical complexity to the vendor.

However, many users have been frustrated with the access they get to performance diagnostics. In 2022, this situation will be resolved as increasing numbers of SaaS and IaaS vendors partner with best-of-breed monitoring and platform solutions. This will then provide their customers with levels of insight that had not previously been possible.

2022 will be the year of the great data steal

As workers are required to return to an office-based life, it's likely some will resist and look elsewhere for employment. Disenchanted with their current employer, some will be tempted to make copies of valuable data files and take them to a new employer.

Dubbed the 'great data steal' this trend could see some businesses lose confidential information which may then benefit a competitor. Internal data security will therefore become an even more important priority during the year.

TLS inspection will increase

For sound security reasons, the vast majority of data traffic within and between businesses is now encrypted. Unfortunately, this means that cybercriminals are following a similar strategy and encrypting rogue traffic as they attempt to infiltrate their victim's infrastructure.

As a result, security teams will need to become more serious about prioritising the inspection of encrypted channels to stop these threats and look to leverage the compute scale of the cloud to do it.

Hybrid work will continue to shake up IT infrastructure

The pandemic has changed the way employees approach their home and work life, with the majority now choosing to work for companies that allow them to work from anywhere. Moreover, flexible workspaces will prompt further investments in collaborative tools and wireless capabilities, along with cloud-agnostic technologies.

As hybrid work becomes the new normal, enterprises will accelerate their digital transformations to ensure the fast and secure access to cloud resources that they now need.

Zero trust fatigue will call for a clearer definition

Divergent zero trust definitions and confusion over what zero trust actually means, jeopardises the sensible adoption of more secure policies. Despite this, governments will drive zero trust deployment and uptake in response to the continuing threat of ransomware and other cybercrimes.

A holistic approach to zero trust is necessary to gain its benefits, yet enterprises swayed by the zero- trust hype, but who also lack a complete understanding of it, will fall victim to tick-box purchasing.

Automation will get smarter through AI and ML but will also divide opinion

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will help drive detection and response of advanced security threats during 2022. It will be more widely implemented through the automation of processes and in support of decision-making.

Workload orchestration will become a priority

Workload orchestration across cloud platforms, the edge, and data centres will be key as workloads follow people across zones. Enterprises will increasingly recognise the need to protect workload data as it moves through cloud environments.

Organisations will learn more about the internet and less about their internal network

Emphasis on traditional corporate networks will continue to decrease during 2022 as the internet becomes the connective tissue for hybrid workforces.

As enterprises move towards connectivity-as-a-service, security-as-a-service technology will deliver advanced security capabilities from the cloud to simplify IT infrastructures, while enforcing access policies consistently wherever users connect.

Operational technology will need to be modernised

Operational technology (OT) lags IT in overhauling security in response to enlarged attack surfaces. Now, OT is a risk to IT and will need rapid modernising during the year if companies are to mitigate risk to business continuity.

When you consider these powerful trends, it becomes clear that 2022 will be a time of extensive activity for many Australian businesses. Those that take the time to carefully assess how markets are evolving and align their product or services to match will be in pole position to capture new opportunities as they emerge.

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