2017 Top 10 IT Security Trends

I have been looking at the coming year and what trends you will probably see actually deployed in your network. These trends are the practical things that will help you to keep your network safer with improved defense-in-depth.

1. A move from being defensive to a more proactive approach to IT security, for instance, application firewalls that actually work and are easy to deploy.
2. Machine learning that *works* spreads out to legacy endpoint security tools, and is able to do real-time payload analysis to prevent ransomware attacks.
3. You will finally get affordable and smart enough network traffic analysis tools that will show if your network has been penetrated, combined with:
4. Platforms that will show you understandable threat intelligence with analytics and reporting that will dramatically shorten the “dwell time” of hackers in your network.
5. Breach prevention will be getting easier by automatic OS hardening utilities.
6. Dedicated network tools will be able to do smart network segmentation and isolation to block hackers from getting to the crown jewels.
7. You will be able to deploy much improved Enterprise Mobile Management products that are able to do proactive mobile protection.
8. More intelligent Identity Management tools will be released that will allow you to secure IoT devices, services that are running, and end-users at the same time.
9. A non-technical trend is that Boards will insist on significantly beefing up IT Security Policy and Procedure, which will make your life significantly easier because you finally have air cover and budget for the things you knew you needed to deploy but got pushback on.
10. Thousands of your peers have started phishing their own users in 2016 to keep employees on their toes with security top of mind. This will be the trend that catches fire in 2017 and tens of thousands of sites will deploy new-school security awareness training.

If you are not a KnowBe4 customer yet, at times like this, it is very good to know what percentage of your users are vulnerable to social engineering attacks. We recommend you do your free Phishing Security Test and find out what the phish-prone percentage of your users is.