Security 2020 - Fixing the link that risks breaking the chain

In 2015, two hackers, albeit in a controlled environment, hacked into a Jeep Cherokee through the entertainment system and disabled the transmission. This led to a recall of over 1.4 million vehicles to fix the vulnerabilities that made this attack possible.

Today, many such devices, connected directly to the internet are used to pay tolls and also send confidential and personally identifiable information through this internet to points of sale devices in drive through restaurants. The connected car isn’t the only connected device. Watches, Refrigerators, TVs, Home Automation systems – all connect to the internet and make transactions on behalf of the person. And they all transmit infinitely sensitive information.

The whole digital revolution has had everyone progressively move their data and applications to the cloud. And this opens an entirely different can of worms from a security standpoint. While public cloud providers have improved infra security, banks have to confi­gure their applications safely on the cloud. They will need to build resilience through employee education, mature cloud competence and acquire new tools for managing cloud security.

And it doesn’t stop there. We have bragged about using big data, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI ) to detect and prevent attacks – hackers are now using ML and AI to refine their attacks to an unprecedented degree of sophistication.

The biggest challenge for Cybersecurity experts is the fact that there is no longer a “Safe Zone” – no longer routers, switches, or firewalls to enclose sensitive information from the prying hands of hackers. 5G, and the Internet of Things (IOT) have brought an end to what we imagined as privacy.

Understandably, across the world, nations are enacting stricter laws and regulatory requirements to define and protect the privacy of citizens. At the same time, these very lawmakers are also forcing banks to share customer and transaction data with third parties in the name of anti-protectionism and free markets.

What will be the security of the future? How will banks of tomorrow protect customer information and yet collaborate with the global ecosystem of authorized stakeholders? This is the challenge for 2020.

As the digital age evolves, so will cybersecurity devices. Artificial Intelligence, machine learning and cognitive automation will form the basis for analyzing, understanding, identifying, and preventing cyber-attacks. Read in the Infosys Finacle report on top 10 trends for banks to scale digital in 2020 to explores the different strategies that banks are adopting to build a flexible, yet robust, fluid, yet firm security system that both protects data and prevents its breach.