Five cybersecurity experts give their predictions for H2

Execs and analysts from Bytes, Computacenter, Sapphire, Canalys and Omdia on how they expect the cybersecurity industry to unfold in the second half of the year

The channel has been universally praised for the work it carried out in helping its customers move to remote working models.

But that hard work is by no means complete, with the next challenge set to be helping parts of the workforce return to offices, while other parts stay remote.

The changes to working habits have, and will continue to, change the requirements of cybersecurity providers in the channel. It is this trend that will form the basis of CRN's second DeskFlix event today, which you can register to attend here.

Ahead of the event, five speakers have made their top predictions for the cybersecurity space in the second half of this year. You can hear more from each speaker by attending the DeskFlix event.

Dave Rawle, CTO, Bytes

Businesses are developing and deploying solutions that provide an underpinning of secure network fabric. The whole secure access service edge, and the products around there, was relevant in terms of SD-WAN and solutions that would layer security into that.

It was relevant before this happens and it's incredibly relevant now. I think it will be a key part of business transformation in the second half of this year in terms of enabling businesses to work remotely and have a dispersed workforce.

Five cybersecurity experts give their predictions for H2

Execs and analysts from Bytes, Computacenter, Sapphire, Canalys and Omdia on how they expect the cybersecurity industry to unfold in the second half of the year

Ketaki Borade, analyst, Canalys

We made one prediction in October 2019, saying that five of the top 10 security vendors would be moved out of the top 10 in the next 12 months.

We are seeing those changes resonating over the past 12-18 months. Symantec got acquired, Sophos has been acquired by private equity, and a few of the other vendors, like IBM, are seeing their relevance to security and the channel being questioned.

A couple of factors have already started showing and these vendors are losing their share. With the COVID situation we don't see that this will get better immediately.

Five cybersecurity experts give their predictions for H2

Execs and analysts from Bytes, Computacenter, Sapphire, Canalys and Omdia on how they expect the cybersecurity industry to unfold in the second half of the year

Colin Williams, networking and security CTO, Computacenter

Zero trust is a 10-year-old topic that many of us poo-pooed for many years, but I can't see how we can unlock untether and enable tomorrow's workforce today, AI-enabled world of people with optimum security all the time unless we start to consider the principles of zero trust.

We then have to gracefully navigate our customers towards [those principles], no matter how long it takes.

So, for me, it's an appreciation of the importance of zero trust, and a way of plotting a path towards realising it.

Five cybersecurity experts give their predictions for H2

Execs and analysts from Bytes, Computacenter, Sapphire, Canalys and Omdia on how they expect the cybersecurity industry to unfold in the second half of the year

Annabel Berry, CEO, Sapphire

For me it is about working more flexibly with your colleagues and what platforms give those opportunities. We've all in the last couple of weeks embraced the uses of Zoom and Teams. We certainly had access to these systems before but we weren't using them in anger like we are now. That will continue.

We're seeing more people share information via Dropbox and Google Drive now, so it's looking at how things change and how that will drive the requirements of people within our organisation. So the collaboration platforms will be important as well as the wider use of cloud applications, and how you secure those down.

Five cybersecurity experts give their predictions for H2

Execs and analysts from Bytes, Computacenter, Sapphire, Canalys and Omdia on how they expect the cybersecurity industry to unfold in the second half of the year

Maxine Holt, analyst, Omdia

The move to the cloud is so huge. It's a massive area for cybersecurity for the next 12 months.

It's not just about the technology to enable organisations to work remotely; it's also about the fact that the network traffic is increasing because people are working from these different locations. What follows traffic is security, so there will be spending that is increased in network security to support that.

That's the big prediction. A smaller one to bear in mind is frictionless biometrics.

Frictionless biometric authentication is going to increase - whether that is facial recognition, iris recognition or voice recognition is going to increase.

It will be interesting to see how that goes in a post-COVID world.