Welcome to the 21st Century's Third Decade - 2021
Cybersecurity and Technology a look back and forward
January 1, 2021
Dean Norris @geekynerdyone
Common Era 2020 went out with a bang, setting mortality world records no one wanted and are still broken daily. A once in a century pandemic that governments, doctors and scientists knew would happen, just not when or how terrible. Perhaps smaller pandemics over the past twenty years which were controlled easily and less than a blip compared to yearly flu infections, which were a reminder that the world's last pandemic had never been conquered and continued to add to its mortality world record. Its lesson in humility had been forgotten until now.
Looking back over the past ten months cybersecurity's biggest hurdles were securing and deploying remote workers, election security had many engineers working long hours without recognition, AI's False Information attacks like DeepFake images and videos. The largest cybersecurity attack was discovered late after years of hiding, the SolarWinds Orion hack will be felt for many many months.
Looking Way Back - the past decade 2011-2020
The past decade in cybersecurity began with a small, but necessary insight for using "2020" as a our digit year (much like leading up to "2000"), and then an increase in Ransomware, new speed records for DDOS attacks, theoretical quantum computing challenges to cryptography with some interesting tests and attacks against CPU optimization pipelines with Meltdown and Spectre. IOT and consumer products that can never be patched, so difficult Apple discontinued their Airport Extreme WIFI product. A marked rise in machine learning use by criminals and information security professionals alike. The gamification of infosec making learning, teaching and mundane security tasks fun. A gig economy for penetration testing, more implementations of Zero Trust and various ways to secure software engineering development and deployment transformations with CI/CD pipelines, cloud first multi-tenant architectures and devops standards which are as custom as they are similar. Finally, the EU has declared privacy as a human right, and a mandated priority to be measured and treasured, but just means less sleep for us. Though, privacy implementations I power through with a smile on my face, let us all hope that does not fade away.
The security terrain has evolved, but fundamentals such as Risk is still the metric, with Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability of import for tasks, devices, software and persons... every person. New security frameworks that seem old now, but are less than a decade in age. MITRE ATT&CK, Cloud Security Framework, a new comprehensive NIST 800-53, even the RSA Conference and CISSP exams evolved.
All Eyes Forward - the next 18 months 2021
My personal guesses and Infosec lottery pics. In 2021 we will still be finding how bad SolarWinds Orion is, and that will be a high priority for many companies who failed to securely configure their networks and servers. SolarWinds hit government institutions hard, and may accelerate their current cloud deployment push, along with federal information security legislation and oversight, much like the Dobbs Frank Act. A wilder guess would be federal taxes would be imposed for companies benefiting from the free publicity because they were hacked. Thirty seconds on CNBC or Bloomberg is not cheap, lots of reporters own stock in these companies and are not shy sprinkling in their mentions. Entrepreneurs have a word for this.
New remote employee architectures solidify and be deployed. Corporations have been divesting employee perks as what used to be expensive, like cellphones and Internet access are now ubiquitous or commodities. Continuing to reduce expenses around office space seems like a logical next step. I expect a return to regular offices and then a migration back to home offices (2025). A company like WeWork will do well, if their price is right.
Outside of cybersecurity there debt that will need to be addressed, some companies have already closed, others (as we saw with the DOT-COM crash and 9/11) will just disappear quietly. Individuals have far more limited options, but new laws passed by places like California insure a housing market boom, and home owners being able to borrow against what will surely be as transformational to cities as 1970s, late 1990s through mid 2000s. Rural areas, that resisted previous booms will just see their taxes rise.
With a 500% increase in San Francisco overdoses during 2020, I expect a high number of people with new or previous alcoholic and prescription dependencies to be seeking treatment.
Finally, a non-partisan to review US medical and insurance responses, especially long term care such as nursing homes.
Further out - 2022-2030
New AI/ML IOT devices and software for all phases of software development, by 2030 most code generated will be done by an AI or AI helper. There may be some holdouts like government and large companies. I admit this is a fantastical prediction because this technology does not exist, no one seems to know how to make this work, but some AI/ML programs create configurations, test plans, evaluate test plans, and can arrange objects on a web page. Hopefully someone will finally create a usable enterprise calendaring, messaging and HR system.
In regular consumer products I expect that self driving cars will be the norm, and with Apple's entry (or suspected entry) a car will become a commodity product like mobile devices, replaced every year or two. A large debate will be at what age should you buy your child a car, is five years old too young? The answer will be no, not too young. legislation for protections on child only cars and as I have said before all cars will not be the same size and/or look the same. Bikes and human hybrid powered or hybrid controlled vehicles will need their own road/lane - but their are other solutions - this is the easiest to create and enforce, and should be rethought for CE 2031 and beyond. Most large cities already have HOV lanes, and cameras, toll tracking is not uncommon. Perhaps a transit and bike lane will reverse and be for human controlled vehicles in inner cities.
Blockchain security solutions will be adopted, maybe even loved and treasured. How are we not using these already? I guess I left that patent at a previous company.
Finally, perhaps more of a fantastical outlook, I am hopeful a sincere secure consumer privacy solution will emerge by 2030 and be adopted by companies and people, but like with most things unless Microsoft integrates it into their Windows OS, or perhaps Google or Apple in their mobile devices and usage is simple, hidden and "just works" it probably won't catch on.
And for the COVID19 front, unless these mutations are found to be worse than we currently know, we should have a well deserved summer 2021.
Have a safe 2021!
dean.
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