In-house Expert Roundup: It’s Prediction Time – Watch for Subtle Shifts and Seismic Changes in 2024

The end of the year has snuck up on us again. And as we do every year, we’ve turned to our in-house XM Cyber experts, to hear their takes on the subtle shifts and seismic changes we can expect in cybersecurity, version 2024. 

What does the upcoming year hold for cybersecurity? Our experts definitely had a lot to share on that topic and to help keep it simple, we’ve broken it down by topic. So without further ado, let’s dive in:

Prediction Number 1 – Orgs Will do More with Less

• Boaz Gorodissky, Co-Founder and CTO – A growing landscape of complex on-prem networks, extensive public cloud integrations, and more and more SaaS applications will continue to amplify the attack surface in 2024. The shortage of proficient cyber defense experts will continue, and this will necessitate smarter and more efficient management frameworks. 

• Rinat Villeval, Manager of Technical Enablement – Due to the scarcity of skilled security professionals, in 2024 businesses will increasingly divert resources towards outsourcing remediation tasks to Managed Security Services Providers (MSSPs). This strategic shift will not only optimize efficiency but also curtail expenses – preserving full-time employee budgets, while bolstering overall cybersecurity measures for companies facing talent shortages.

• Shay Siksik, VP Customer Experience – In 2024, security leaders who are struggling with an overload of tools, limited resources, and tightened budgets will pivot towards maximizing outcomes with fewer resources. They’ll prioritize strategies that amplify efficiency. And they’ll look for innovative ways to enhance remediation efficiency while doing more with less.

• Bill Bradley, Senior Director of Product Marketing – In 2024, CISOs, influenced by SEC regulations and legal actions against their peers, will be seeking better Exposure Management, aided by Attack Path modeling. They will be increasingly focused on justifying what gets addressed and why – beyond the vanity metrics of ‘patches deployed’ or ‘devices patched’. They will need to show that they’re taking a smarter approach to security by making the biggest security impact with the resources they have. 

• Dale Fairbrother, Senior Product Marketing Manager – In 2024, we will see increased training to address the shortage of professionals, alongside upskilling for existing staff. Following a long-term push to raise the priority of training, executives and board members are listening to these requests. Even the regulatory compliance frameworks are all being updated to include a focus on training to ensure operational cadence.

Prediction Number 2 – Identities Will Play a Key Role 

• Zur Ulianitzky, VP Research – Identities are the keys for attacks within cloud environments. In 2023, despite the fact that we saw many cloud-based attacks leveraging identities, we did not see enough organizations adopting the principle of least privilege. In 2024, we will continue to see more cloud attacks based on identities, alongside more companies focusing on remediating cloud exposures focused on identities.

• Dale Fairbrother, Senior Product Marketing Manager – Ransomware continues to evolve its methodology, motivation and desired impact or outcome, and identity plays a growing role. In 2024, we will continue to see classic extortion-type campaigns being targeted more at individuals and personal data, than enterprise organizations. Starting with social engineering and credentials theft, threat actors will aim to compromise personal cloud storage systems, mobile phone data and credit card information. The results could either be identity theft, or ‘just’ holding personal data for ransom, threatening to expose the data online unless the ransom is paid. 

Prediction Number 3 – AI Will Become Even More Ubiquitous

• Mike Heredia, VP EMEA – In 2024, we will see AI really emerge in its ability to look at organizations from an attacker’s point of view. Once it understands an organization’s attack surface, it will run continuous modeling and generate plans for what organizations need to do to protect themselves, in real time. This will shorten the time period of effectiveness for new attack methods, and alert organizations if and when security tools are not configured properly.

• Dale Fairbrother, Senior Product Marketing Manager – In 2024, AI will continue to be used for both good and bad. In 2023, it was common to load selfies into an AI tool and have it create enhanced portraits, anime characters and even school yearbook photos. There are also AI-powered tools available to clone your voice and automate podcast scripting and recording. 2024 could easily be the year we see an AI-powered bot that looks like you, talks like you, that can mimic your personality, and even knows all your secret data – all gathered through social engineering! 

Prediction Number 4 – Orgs will Focus on Breaking Down Siloed Teams and Tools 

• Dale Fairbrother, Senior Product Marketing Manager – The drive to consolidate tools isn’t a new thing, but until now the main driver for this was cost reduction, while reducing complexity was a welcome by-product. In 2024, we will see a third driver added to this consolidation strategy: the desire to foster a culture of collaboration across teams. For example, rather than just making SOC tools better for that specific team, stakeholders will be looking for the right tools to bridge the gap between different teams – allowing each team to use the same UI and same dataset to complete their tasks. 

• Dale Fairbrother, Senior Product Marketing Manager – Security Operations teams, using XDR and next-gen SIEM solutions for reactive incident response, will see their security tools pivoting to try and add a layer of proactive security, with guidance and context that can be used by the IT operations team for patching and hardening. The tools traditionally used for patching and vulnerability assessment will form a key basis for this and drive the shift from vulnerability-focused remediation to exposure-based remediation that works in tandem with threat intelligence feeds and security research teams to ensure the full risk context of the attack surface is understood and assessed.

The Bottom Line

In 2024, cybersecurity will continue to navigate an ever-changing landscape. Leaders will focus on achieving more with fewer tools and prioritizing impactful security measures, as opposed to superficial metrics. Identity-based cloud attacks will demand ever-greater vigilance, and AI will increasingly be used to mimic individuals via social engineering. Cyber skills training will expand, while tool consolidation will foster collaboration. Ultimately, 2024 will see the convergence of strategies and technologies – resulting in a more proactive, more collaborative, more effective and ever-more vigilant cybersecurity ecosystem. 

Here is to a more secure 2024!