FINAL WORD
Good and the
Bad of 2018
Nicolai Solling at Help AG reflects on the
tumultuous security happenings of 2017 and
some crystal ball gazing into 2018.
Nicolai Solling is CTO at Help AG.
A
s we enter the last quarter of
the year, it makes sense to look
back at what has been a year
dominated by cyber-attacks of a volume,
scale and complexity that have been truly
unmatched. Shamoon 2, Petya, WannaCry,
KRACK, and the Equifax breach are all
examples of such attacks but they of
course present only a snapshot, with the
largest majority not getting so much as a
passing mention in most media.
So, as we look forward to 2018, it is
worth considering what the top technology
trends will be, while considering the role
of cybersecurity in each. I do believe there
are quite a few trends to look out for,
some positive and some negative. So, let
us get the bad news out of the way by first
considering the negatives.
Unfortunately, we are living in an era in
which cyber-attacks will start to challenge
how we can utilise technology in the future.
Of course, this is extremely disheartening
as I believe technology holds the answer to
many of the big challenges we are facing
in the world. So, there will be a lot of
discussion around how to deal with attacks.
I also think that we will start discussing
privacy and what the roles of nations
should be under the umbrella of protecting
the greater good. The big concern I
have is that we are living in a time when
the techniques used by governments
to perform legal interception and
investigation of national security concerns
66
are now being exploited by the bad guys. I
think it is time the cybersecurity industry
understood that if we break encryption
or build backdoors or even avoid fixing
discovered vulnerabilities to allow for
easier legal intercept, which in itself can
be a good thing, we also open up profound
set vulnerabilities when these are also
discovered by cyber criminals! We saw
this most recently with the Petya and
WannaCry malwares, which both used
vulnerabilities initially discovered by
intelligence agencies in the Western world.
It is not all gloom and doom though.
On the positive side, I think that 2017
has been yet another year wherein we
have seen our lives made easier and more
efficient by new technology. We sometimes
refer to it as smart-technology or IoT
In the cloud,
security is
probably even
more pronounced
as you put your
eggs in someone
else’s basket to
take care of them.
and connecting your stuff to the internet,
allowing you and your services to interact
with each other. Many fantastic synergies
have resulted from this.
I also think that in coming years, we
will really start to see cloud adoption here
in the Middle East. While organisations
in the region have always been early
adopters of technology, they have been
quite hesitant when it comes to cloud.
But I can really see that this is changing,
and adoption is starting to happen. Our
industry will undergo fundamental changes
as customers transition from capex to opex
based spending in the future and this will of
course impact technology models.
The positive thing for us is that the
underlying requirement of securing
services from a technology perspective
or from an information security strategy
perspective will still dominate cloud
conversations in 2018. In fact, in the
cloud, security is probably even more
pronounced as you put your eggs in
someone else’s basket to take care of them.
I have no doubt that even with its
challenges and security concerns, the
digital march will steadily gain pace in 2018
and digital transformation will continue
to shape the way in which organisations
conduct business. The organisations that
come out on top however, will be those that
factor in cybersecurity from the onset and
constantly evaluate their security posture to
keep cyber criminals at bay.
Issue 13
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS