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In 2023, the trend toward digital transformation will continue to accelerate with new and innovative technologies. This will include improvements in wearables and 5G technology, which will enable more devices to run Android and iOS. Unfortunately, this will also increase the number of complex cyber threats and malicious actors focusing on wearable technology, mobile devices and applications.

With threats on the rise, organizations will be forced to increase their cybersecurity investments in 2023. With the recent shift in remote work becoming the new normal, cybercriminals have found new ways to poke holes in a company’s network. We are going to see a shift in cyber investments with solutions that are more device-centric and personalized. This will include an increase in security spend on cyber-physical systems (CPS) and wearables.

By 2023, government regulations requiring organizations to provide free and accessible consumer privacy rights will cover 5 billion citizens and more than 70% of global GDP (source: Gartner). Next year, I predict that privacy will become a primary concern for the consumer and organizations will frantically try to comply with the new regulations. With the focus being on the consumer’s privacy, organizations will need to turn to new solutions and if not, it will lead to compliance actions against large corporations. In the next few years, we will see large organizations’ average annual budget for privacy continue to increase substantially, allowing a shift from compliance ethics to competitive differentiation.

Supply-chain attacks have proven to be a potent attack vector in the past and next year they will continue to proliferate. Mobile devices will be a greater target due to our smartphones being an extension of our personal and working lives, and these devices are no exception to supply-chain attacks as these attacks will cast a wide net over a captive user base. We will see an increase in cybercriminals using selective targeting by employing scrutinizing criteria in an attempt to limit the probability of detection. We will also see the presence of insecure debugging and engineering apps finding their way into Android vendor builds.

The rise of BYOD will be accompanied by an increase in malicious attacks that attempt to breach the workspace sandbox. This makes pre-installed apps with privileged access a more desirable target for privilege escalation attacks. Mobile OS developers will continue to make accommodative changes at the operating system level to facilitate the adoption of BYOD but with continued improvements and dedicated efforts by cybercriminals, there is a higher chance of a security gap. The balance of security and usability for BYOD will need to be carefully considered and properly implemented.