Top technology trends reshaping the security industry

This article presents the top 5 technology trends, the drivers behind the trends, as well as underlying technologies supporting the trends that we believe will impact our industry the most. 

The top 5 technology trends are:

• Trend 1 - Cybersecure ► (Securing environments from Cyber intrusions).
• Trend 2 - Applied AI ► (Investing in Applied AI to drive enhanced security).
• Trend 3 - Sustainability ► (Reducing carbon footprint for infrastructure & its security).
• Trend 4 - Connecting Cloud and Edge ► (More secure & efficient interplay between Cloud & Edge based infrastructure).
• Trend 5 - 5G ► (Exploring 5G private networks for new opportunities).

Trend 1 – Cybersecure

According to the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report 2021, cyber risks continue to rank among the highest global risks.

• Of all crime types, cybercrime increases at the fastest rate.
• Cybercrime is expected to cost the world $10.5 trillion annually by 2025. In value this would be the third largest economy after the US and China.
• Critical infrastructure is a target for many hackers.

Drivers

• Increasing number of attacks and threat actors.
  • The global threat actors are many, to include terrorists, criminals, organized crime, and in some cases, even foreign governments.
  • Risks towards critical infrastructures.
• Exploding attack surface
  • COVID-19 has forced employees to work remotely from their homes.
  • Explosion in digital interactions including the meshing of machine and human.
  • An exponential increase in the number of connected devices. Cisco expects 30 billion connected devices by 2023. Each connected device (camera, laptop, streaming video, intercom, sensors) represents an attack surface where hackers can enter into your system, which can be an avenue into your data.

Zero trust

Most corporate networks consist of many interconnected segments and an increasing number of IoT devices. The once traditional approach of trusting devices within your corporate perimeter makes less sense in such highly diverse and distributed environments.

Zero-trust security, also called perimeter-less security, states that organizations should not trust anything inside or outside of their network perimeters. Every device and user that tries to access an application or system must be verified (encrypt, authenticate, authorize) before access is granted.

Hardware root of trust

Hardware root of trust ensures that only trusted software will be executed on the hardware. It starts with hardware that has credentials burned in at production. This hardware will only boot from software that is digitally signed.

Trend 2 – Applied AI

Drivers

• Applied AI promises unique opportunities for the security industry, including better situational awareness, analysis to do pre-emptive actions, and a faster response to security incidents.
• Applied AI includes technologies to train machines to recognize patternsand then to interpret and act on the patterns.
• Companies continue to prioritize AI for innovation investments.
  • 2020: $55 billion in innovation investments.
  • 2020: 323,000 patents granted.

Underlying technologies

Audio analytics

Audio analytics is about analyzing and understanding audio signals captured by digital devices. Audio analytics will provide unique and new security surveillance functions such as:

• Analyzing and extracting insights from audio signals such as detecting audio events, recognizing audio backgrounds, and detecting audio anomalies.
• Analyzing a human voice to extract information beyond speech recognition, including speaker identification and verification of age, gender, and emotional state.

Digital twin

A digital twin is a digital representation of real-world things, places, processes, and people. A digital twin model is connected to IoT devices, sensors, 3D models, and more. Digital twin models will give companies better situational awareness and will enable them to take faster actions to reduce and mitigate security and safety threats.
 

Trend 3 - Sustainability

Drivers

The year 2021 with extreme weather, a UN Climate Change Conference, and an energy crisis in Europe. A clearer message cannot be given to business owners to invest in a sustainable future that includes climate actions.

We cannot continue to invest in products and systems that cannot be maintained over a long lifetime. Investing in a security system is an infrastructure investment and special care should be taken to produce a system with a long lifetime using product platforms with trustworthy partners.

Underlying technologies

Low-power design

Low-power design is essential to reduce energy consumption while dealing with an exponential increase in the number of IoT and edge devices. Low-power design includes technologies such as low-power integrated circuits, low-power wireless, and high-efficiency power supplies. It also includes intelligent power management, for example, turning off certain sections of circuitry according to operational mode.

Platforms and ecosystems

Investing in platforms and ecosystems means investing in sustainability. Modern technology platforms provide an extended product lifetime by:

• Managing cybersecurity.
• Managing upgrades and future extensions.
• Usinglong lifetime components.
• Interacting with other products and systems in the ecosystem.

Trend 4 – Connecting Cloud and Edge

Drivers

Google, Amazon, and Microsoft continue with massive investments in building cloud and AI services. Via their cloud ecosystems they have exposed AI and advanced services to the masses with features such as MFA (multi-factor-authentication), speech to text, and digital twin, to name a few.

Security systems collect data (video, audio, sensors, readers) and manage devices on the edge of their networks. Historically, this data and devices has been managed over closed networks with limited connectivity to the cloud.

Over the past few years we have experienced a strong trend of security solutions consisting of a combination of cloud, local servers and edge devices. This trend is further strengthened by the massive investments and new advanced services offered by the cloud ecosystems.

Underlying technologies

Cloud Ecosystems

A cloud ecosystem is a complex system of interdependent components that all work together to enable cloud services. The three main cloud ecosystems are AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

A cloud ecosystem allows companies to build new business models withnew applications that can be sold and delivered through an app store such as AWS Marketplace and Microsoft Azure Marketplace where the customer has access to a catalog of different vendor software and services.

Edge AI

Edge AI is AI algorithms processed locally on an Edge Device ►, where the algorithms are using data (audio, video, sensors) that are captured on the device.

Edge AI has been made possible through new tinyML algorithms, as well as the capacity leap for system-on-chip technology, where it is now possible to execute several trillion machine learning operations per second on a small, embedded device.

Trend 5 – 5G

Drivers

5G is fast becoming the network of choice due to its performance and reliability. According to the latest Cisco Annual Internet Report, 5G will support more than 10% of the world’s mobile connections by 2023.

5G is more than just a new generation of mobile networks with higher bandwidth and speed. 5G provides support for new use cases, expanding connectivity solutions for many industries.

Underlying technologies

5G private networks

5G allows for business to have private 5G networks where the business can isolate its 5G devices from the public network, limiting exposure to public interfaces as well as allowing the business to have better control and management of its communication services.

5G mission critical communication

5G mission critical communication provides considerable benefits over an aging TETRA infrastructure. In addition to push-to-talk radio services, 5G provides new use cases for mission critical data and video, without compromising the strong TETRA features such as high availability and security that is required for public safety services.

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About the author

Thomas Hægh joined Zenitel in 2003 and became CTO in 2009.

He received his masters degree in electrical engineering in 1994 from Norwegian Institute of Technology. Thomas has 25+ years experience in hardware and software design developing IP communication solutions.
 

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References

The Global Risk Report 2021, World Economic Forum (www.weforum.org)
The Global Risks Report 2021 is the 16th edition of the Forum’s annual analysis and looks back at a year ravaged by a global pandemic, economic downturn, political turmoil and the ever-worsening climate crisis.

The report explores how countries and businesses can act in the face of these risks.

Cisco Annual Internet Report 2021 (www.cisco.com )
 The Cisco Annual Internet Report provides organizations of all kinds with technology and business insights that are designed to support your networking objectives and strategic goals.

The top trends in tech (www.mckinsey.com )
This research examines a range of factors to identify the technology trends that matter most to top executives and the companies they lead.

For every trend, we calculated a momentum score based on the growth rate of the technologies underlying the trends, which we derived from an in-depth analysis of six proxy metrics.

• patent filings
• publications
• news mentions
• online search trends
• private-investment amount, and the number of companies making investments.

Gartner Hype Cycle (www.gartner.com )
The 2021 Gartner Hype Cycles help organizations to make innovation a core competency and shape and prioritize their approach to innovation delivery.