By 2020, 60 percent of digital businesses to face service failure due to digital risk: Gartner

As businesses take the digital path, the absence of directly owned infrastructure and services outside of IT’s control will have to be addressed by cybersecurity. A new report by Gartner predicts that by 2020, 60 percent of digital businesses will suffer service failures due to the incapability of IT security teams to manage digital risk. “Cybersecurity is a critical part of digital business with its broader external ecosystem and new challenges in an open digital world,” said Paul Proctor, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “Organizations will learn to live with acceptable levels of digital risk as business units innovate to discover what security they need and what they can afford. Digital ethics, analytics and a people-centric focus will be as important as technical controls.” The report points out five key areas that one needs to focus on when addressing cybersecurity in digital business. To begin with, improving leadership and governance is said to be arguably more important than developing technology tools and skills. Decision making, prioritisation, budget allocation, measurement, reporting, transparency and accountability are said to be the key attributes of a successful program that balances the need to protect with the need to run the business. IT risk and security leaders must move from trying to prevent every threat and acknowledge that perfect protection is not achievable, adds the report. Gartner estimates that 60 percent of enterprise information security budgets will be allocated for rapid detection and response approaches by 2020, which means up from less than 30 percent in 2016. As digital businesses move at a faster pace than traditional business, security designed for traditional will no longer work. IT risk and information security leaders must assess and transform their programs to become digital business enablers rather than obstacles to innovation. Earlier, protecting data was easier due to data centers and everything in one place. But now the data center goes beyond into operational technology, cloud, mobile and software. Citing an example, the report adds by 2018, 25 percent of corporate data traffic will flow directly from mobile devices to the cloud, bypassing enterprise security controls. This means organisations need to address cybersecurity and risks in technologies and assets they no longer own or control, expalins Gartner. Finally, cybersecurity should address the needs of people through process and cultural change. The report talks about the need for people-centric security that gives each person in an organisation increasing autonomy in how he or she uses information and devices and the level of security he or she prefers. The individual then has a certain set of rights in using technology and is linked to the group in the entire enterprise. The individual must also recognise that if things go wrong, it will have an impact on the team, group and business, further adds Gartner.