The pandemic and the worldwide adoption of remote working resulted in cybersecurity undergoing years’ worth of transformation in a matter of months and therefore it is tough to understand the current cybersecurity landscape and predict security trends, the PwC India said on Friday.

The effects of the pandemic that began last year are still visible across the cybersecurity landscape, making it difficult to predict security trends for 2021. Considering the unprecedented events of last year, any predictions for the immediate future cannot be definitive, the firm said.

Rising geopolitical tensions worldwide have resulted in governments and enterprises increasingly focusing on cybersecurity to protect their assets from cyber attackers. Instances of cyberattacks by national/state actors targeting critical infrastructure and nationally important establishments are becoming more common, according to Siddharth Vishwanath, Partner and Cyber Advisory Leader, PwC India.

“In 2021, there will be an increased focus among countries on developing stricter cybersecurity regulations and efforts to build both defensive and offensive capabilities,” he said.

Importance of data

On data, he said the importance of data has risen meteorically, with online transactions/interactions becoming a larger part of daily lives. “Technologies, especially consumer-facing ones that rely on data to solve important problems, have gained notoriety due to instances of consumer privacy and digital dignity being compromised,” Vishwanath pointed out.

Also read: Over 22 billion records exposed worldwide in 2020: Report

Organisations this year will face greater penalties for not adhering to data privacy regulations. Regulators are also expected to carefully observe how data and consumer privacy are being managed by enterprises.

“This year, we will see active threat hunting becoming mainstream as organisations move beyond just rule-based or machine-based protect, detect and respond strategies,” he added.

Traditionally, businesses focus on preventing cyberattacks by relying on security practices such as patching and blocking bad internet traffic or internet protocol (IP) addresses. However, these are not effective in stopping advanced attacks. Also, old mechanisms fail to provide any knowledge of what an adversary does once it penetrates a network, warned PwC.

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