Freely subscribe to our NEWSLETTER

For many companies, the dependency on uploading information to cloud-based applications continues to grow. The need for proper protection has never been more paramount than it is now.

Machine Learning-based Security

Machine Learning and AI will continue proving their worth in the security space. The shock and awe has faded, and now we are really seeing effective applications of these technologies that go beyond marketing buzzwords. Another area that will see more support from vendors is shared threat intelligence. This has always been a challenge, maybe more so in the private sector than the public sector, and security vendors are weaponising threat intel, either from within their customer pool or across vendors, to better equip customers to address potential threats. Both of these areas will help push us more towards frictionless security workflows that enable a more risk based approach to safeguarding digital assets.

Digital Transposition

Companies will also realise that, even though they shifting to cloud applications for many functions as part of a broader Digital Transformation effort, there are some application that simply cannot be moved to the cloud. Perhaps it’s because the person who set them up has long since left the company. Or perhaps it’s because the applications need to be a particular location due to data residency or network latency issues.

Whatever the reason, companies need to be able to extend the benefits of the cloud to these earthbound apps. We call this Digital Transposition, since it shifts or transposes the benefits of cloud to on-prem apps. We believe it should be part of every company’s Digital Transformation strategy.

Companies are going to look for ways to manage on-premise applications as easily as they can manage cloud applications. This includes a central, cloud-managed point of control for identity and access management that pushes access policies down to on-prem apps, and allows end users to view on-prem apps and cloud apps in a unified Single Sign-On portal.

API-first Identity

Companies will demand that Identity & Access Management vendors open up their services to API-driven access. This will enable companies to use their IAM systems for custom-built applications used by their customers.

Think of an online retailer: they want to share the same customer identity across their customer facing app, their CRM system (say, Salesforce), and their customer support application (say, Zendesk), so they can have a unified view of the customer. Doing this requires API-driven access to connect each of these apps to their identity store. So, we’ll see customers look for companies that provide API access to all their functionality, and vendors will lead with an API whenever building new functionality.