Predictions For 2023

Well, it’s that time of year again. The leaves are changing colors, the air is getting cooler, and the cybersecurity “experts” are coming out of the woodwork to make their bold predictions for the future.

We all know the drill by now. Every December, a new crop of thought leaders release their latest predictions for the upcoming year. And every January, we all sit around and shake our heads at how wrong they all were.

So instead of regurgitating the same old tired predictions, I’ve decided to have some fun with this and give you my list of the top 20 cybersecurity predictions for 2023…that you wish were true!

Cybersecurity Predictions That You Wish Were True

1. Hackers will finally get bored of stealing our data and move on to more interesting pursuits.

2. Security awareness training will finally be effective, and everyone will start following best practices.

3. End-users will stop being end-users and start being security professionals.

4. Organizations will suddenly become very interested in actually implementing security controls.

5. CISOs will no longer be second-guessed by the board and will be given free rein to do their jobs.

6. CISOs will no longer report to the CIO but will instead report directly to the CEO.

7. IT departments will finally start working *with* security instead of against it.

8. Application developers will care about security from Day 1 and build in security controls from the start.

9 or 10 (tied). Patch management/vulnerability management programs will become so influential that everyone implements them perfectly, and there are never any unpatched systems or known vulnerabilities ever again – OR – ransomware attacks will suddenly become a thing of the past.

11. Cyber insurance companies will stop being scammy and actually pay out when companies have a data breach.

12. IDS/IPS systems will become so effective that there are never any successful network breaches again – OR – firewalls will become so effective that there are never any successful web application attacks again.

13(tied). All malware authors will be caught and arrested – OR – ALL zero-days will be promptly patched before they can be exploited in the wild.

14(tied). Global warming will be reversed, and we’ll all move back to San Francisco – OR – The deployment of 5G networks worldwide will magically cure all cybersecurity issues.

15(tied). Someone invents the time machine so we can go back and fix everything – OR – Skynet becomes self-aware and destroys us all before we can even finish reading this sentence.

16(tied). Quantum computers render current encryption algorithms obsolete overnight – OR – AI becomes sentient and decides humans are a virus.

17. Aliens land on Earth, and we need to work together to fight them off.

18(tied). Elon Musk perfects brain-computer interfaces, and we can all download Twitter direct to our thoughts.

19(tied). Global peace is declared, and we no longer need cybersecurity – OR – We figure out how to hack people’s brains so they do whatever we want them to do.

20(tied). Grass suddenly becomes purple overnight* – OR -48% of CISOs lose their jobs because they failed to prevent a major cyber incident*.

** I may have made these up ** But seriously, folks, don’t let this happen!

So there you have it, my list of the Top 20 cybersecurity predictions for 2023…that you wish were true!

Do you have any others to add? Let me know in the comments! Happy New Year! #cybersecurity #predictions #funny