Forrester recently issued its “2017 Predictions: Dynamics that Will Shape the Future in the Age of the Consumer,” which among others, makes interesting predictions relating to cybersecurity risks coming up in 2017.

The predictions include:

  • The CIO and the Brass Ring—“In 2017, CIOs will take the plunge and become business leaders to address external and personal risk…The key to this strategy is to more aggressively shift budgets from traditional IT spend to those technologies that directly or indirectly connect to customer experiences.
  • Consumer Trust is Key to Success—“Targeted espionage, ransomware, denial of service, privacy breaches, and more will escalate in 2017…a Fortune 1000 company will fail because of a cyberbreach; healthcare breaches will become as common as retail breaches; more than 500,000 internet-of-things devices will be compromised; within 100 days, the new U.S. president will face a major cybercrisis; national security risks will drive agencies to expand surveillance technologies, creating legal and ethical conflicts between governments and people.” Bottom line prediction—“Your customers are more aware of, wary of, and frustrated with security and privacy risk and you will increasingly gain or lose affinity based on how much they trust your company.”
  • Scarce Talent—the top roles and competencies that will be most in demand include data scientists, digital business leaders, software developers, statistical and predictive analysts, and cybersecurity professionals
  • The Internet of Things—“2017 will bring more IoT complexity, overwhelming enterprises that don’t get ahead of the problem.”
  • Artificial Intelligence—“2017 will be the year the big data floodgates open, driven by a voracious appetite for deeper contextual insights that drive customer engagement via mobile, wearables, and IoT…investments in AI will triple as firms work to convert customer data into personalized experiences.”
  • Cloud computing—the cloud market will accelerate even faster in 2017.

The conclusion is for businesses to “Go…Now.” The cyber predictions are sound and worthy of a read.