Is Your Enterprise Up For the Most Challenging Year in Cyber Security Industry?

• Economic Situation in 2023
• How cybersecurity enterprises can be affected by the situation of 2023?
• How you can be prepared to withstand the challenges of 2023?

The headlines are already filled with talk of skyrocketing inflation, and that trend will likely continue in 2023. Many economies will stagnate or shrink, and businesses need to prepare for that reality. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) cited rising risks of financial instability and recession. This Increases in inflation, interest rates, and gross domestic product have many predicting an inevitable recession in 2023. Thus, without taking precautions and preparation, 2023 will be a difficult year for every specialized business sector including cybersecurity enterprises. But how would you know that your cybersecurity enterprise is up for the upcoming challenging year? To get an idea, we have to understand the impact of 2023 on our cybersecurity field and how these impacts can be minimized by taking various business strategies as appropriate precautions.

How cybersecurity businesses can be affected by the situation of 2023?

Trends in the Cybersecurity Field

Cyberattacks are on the rise, and ransomware and phishing scams are now a common occurrence. As businesses become more digital, they accumulate more data, which becomes highly attractive to cybercriminals that intend to steal it and hold organizations hostage to monetary demands. Mobile and IoT devices are not immune to cybersecurity threats. Additionally, quantum computing is now emerging, which could render existing security systems obsolete.

So, more and more companies are forced to focus on their cybersecurity measurements even in this tough time in 2023. This is particularly good for the cybersecurity industry. More companies trying to be digital means more of them require cybersecurity services. There are a lot of opportunities to offer new services.

Possible Challenges in 2023 for Cybersecurity Filed

Budget Cuts:

An impending recession could spell disaster for organizations of any shape, size, and industry -- especially if it results in budget cuts and staff layoffs. While security is often viewed as safe from the budget, it's not immune to them. Plus, security has historically been viewed as a cost center because its ROI isn't easily calculated.

Shortage of Skilled Employees:

The security industry is no stranger to the skills shortage. For years, report after report has concluded more security employees are needed than there are applicants for security jobs. To make matters worse, budget cuts and layoffs can equate to fewer staff members on a team that has to get the same amount of work completed, no matter what. The most recent "(ISC)2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study" found that, although the cybersecurity workforce is the largest the nonprofit has ever recorded, a worldwide security gap still increased year over year. An estimated 4.7 million people currently make up the cybersecurity workforce -- an increase of 11.1% over 2021 -- but an additional 3.4 million are needed to properly protect and defend today's organizations. Yet, hiring employees with the necessary skills -- and retaining those employees -- continues to be a challenge. That is the reality even before potential budget cuts and layoffs are taken into account.

How to tackle the challenges of 2023?

Though the upcoming times are pretty tough, we can ensure the survival of our business by altering some of our business strategies and taking appropriate precautions based on possible impacts that we have discussed previously.

1. Follow Best Practices In Budgeting:

You can ensure good service with reasonable pricing to your client by following the best practices in your budgeting procedures. To get started, understand how your company’s budget is currently being allocated across all products and services. You have to ensure the best efficacy of your cybersecurity tools and services by continuously monitoring. Other best practices may depend on the organizations and companies you will serve. It may include effective training events for the employees of your client company. You need to be analytical and focused to apply best practices in your budgeting procedures.

1. Invest in training for new employees:

Today's college graduates in the technology or cybersecurity fields, or even those with one to two years of experience, have a definite thirst for knowledge. You can take new cybersecurity talent through a six-month continuous improvement and training program that consists of internal and external educational courses, technical labs, shadowing programs, and cross-training. In the long run and in hard times, organizations benefit from investing in their people.

1. Match people to the job, set goals, and mentor:

Understanding what encourages your individual team members to perform their best work is key to keeping them motivated. people don't tend to burn out if they have work they consider interesting and genuinely enjoy. So, be sure to focus on your HR management and try to set the right people for the right work to have maximum output with fewer expenses on employees. Also, ensure proper monitoring of the work impact of your employees. It will ensure a better outcome for employee work quality as well as for your enterprise.

1. New business initiatives:

Any sort of new business initiative adopted across your company must be assessed and have a security budget applied to it, if applicable, to ensure that the company and its new customers remain secure and well-served.

1. Enable automation:

Automation is critical to removing workflows or steps that are repetitive, redundant or that don't necessarily need a human to perform them. It's a smart way to free up your cybersecurity team's time for more rewarding work.

1. Business priority shifts:

This could be related to people, technology, or monetization. From a people perspective, an example of a business priority shift is the hybrid or, in some cases, permanent work-from-home model and the ongoing adaptations required to maintain cybersecurity best practices.

1. Prepare for the unexpected

Unexpected events can cause budgets to expand or shrink. For example, the Log4j vulnerability suddenly expanded the CISO's realm of responsibilities to encompass libraries being used across the organization and the security impact of that. This kind of event can cause cybersecurity budgets to increase.

It is really hard to accurately predict what kind of challenges you might face in this hard time of 2023 but it is the best policy to be prepared for possible challenges. If you play your cards right, you might be able to not only just survive but also flourish within the upcoming economic crisis of 2023.