Security Risk Management is the key challenge faced in 2021

Security Risk Management is the ongoing process of identifying the security risks and implementing plans to address them. Risk is determined by considering the likelihood that known threats will exploit vulnerabilities and the impact they have on valuable assets. Information security during the pandemic has become more important and more difficult, primarily due to the massive and unexpected shift to home-based devices and work. There are ongoing strategic shifts in the security ecosystem that aren’t yet widely recognized, but are expected to have broad industry impact and significant potential for disruption.

These trends are a response to the key challenges facing security and risk leaders in 2021. They include a persistent skills gap, an increasingly complex geopolitical situation and regulatory environment, the migration of workloads from traditional networks, the explosion in endpoint diversity and a shifting attack environment. India is at an early stage of cloud adoption and the pandemic only accelerated this shift as organizations moved to the cloud to achieve cost efficiency and business continuity. In 2020, hyperscalers, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, increased their investment in data centers in India, further catalyzing Indian organizations’ move to cloud during the pandemic.

There is a huge cybersecurity mesh as the approach to security architecture is emerging to secure distributed digital assets as users move out of the office and applications move to the cloud. It allows security services such as identity, analytics and policy management controls to be used across different silos.

It is time for security products consolidation. CISOs are keen to consolidate the number of security products and vendors they deal with, to improve integration, lower TCO and make it easier to properly configure security solutions, improving the risk posture of the organization. Other top security and risk trends for 2021 include identity first security, machine identity management, breach and attack simulation tools, and privacy enhancing computation techniques. Gartner Forecasts, Enterprise Information Security and Risk Management spending in India to Grow 9.5% in 2021. Enterprises’ Rapid Shift to Cloud Continues to Increase Spending on Cloud Security. Enterprise information security and risk management end user spending in India is on pace to total 2.08 billion dollar in 2021, an increase of 9.5% from 2020.

A secure digital environment is now foundational to organizations’ growth and in preparation to another crisis that may arise. Security leaders are ready to reinvest in cybersecurity with a renewed and refreshed rigor. Going forward, Indian CISOs and security leaders will focus on establishing and deploying threat detection and response programs and capabilities, such as endpoint detection and response (EDR), and move to cloud delivered security capabilities to have consistent security coverage whether working from office, home or off-site.

Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief editor, VARINDIA