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2018 will be the end of the era of direct administration

At the close of 2017, companies were just starting to wake up to the fact that the way their IT infrastructures are assembled and configured could be the cause of a security breach. There is danger in manually configuring/manually updating your deployments – you could be your company’s own worst enemy. Because errors will continue to happen, these manual processes will no longer be permitted. Intermediaries will be needed for any and all configuration changes.

Automation will reach the tipping point

In 2018, automation will make the complete transition from “nice to have” to necessity. Network administration will be impossible to do without the ability to automate. Not only is it being widely adopted, we’re seeing the adoption of automation across the spectrum of security solutions.

Private cloud will (finally) take off

Adoption of private cloud will increase in 2018 as we’ll see more hybrid environments where private cloud is hosted by a public cloud provider. This is in large part because the option of running private clouds in the public cloud didn’t exist before.

Network segmentation goes to the services level

With the rise of containerisation, the notion of segmentation moves from the network to the realm of containers. Containers provide more flexibility; however, because they can exist anywhere, it’s not possible to block them off with traditional network segmentation.

Immutable infrastructure will get more attention as it leverages the rise of containerisation

Containerisation is the tipping point for immutable infrastructure. The continual decoupling of application from infrastructure gives new freedoms. With the rise of containerisation, immutable infrastructure can leverage this and become more achievable. People will take more notice of this in 2018 and begin to invest; as a longer-term prediction, immutable infrastructure will take off around 2019-2020.

There will be an increase in attacks that directly cause human injury or extreme congestion

WannaCry is good example of this scenario as the attack took down airports, and we’ll see more of that in 2018. Other likely scenarios: people will mark up traffic signs to confuse self-driving cars, causing severe traffic and chaos on the streets – or worse, traffic accidents. SCADA attacks could turn off power and water, leaving countless people without these essential systems that are necessary for their everyday life and safety.

The security cat and mouse game will extend into machine learning

Machine learning isn’t immune to the sights of cyberattackers; it is not foolproof and can still be confused or “fuzzed.” Machine learning can be tricked into thinking something is normal and allow access, or even create a DOS by feeding misinformation. Also, the machine learning engine is often separate from the application (as a service, for example), so it can be used as another point of attack or another way to blind an adversary.

Reuven Harrison, Chief Technology Officer, Tufin