Daunting Year Ahead: 12 Cybersecurity Predictions for 2021

Cybersecurity predictions for 2021 include more uncertainty, increasing cyberattacks, mounting pressure on MSPs and more.

When it comes to cybersecurity, this year was unlike any previous year. Cybercriminals pounced on the vulnerability created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Cyber threats became more targeted and sophisticated. And MSPs were heavily targeted as a gateway to their clients.

So what’s in store for 2021?

Margaret Cunningham is principal research scientist for human behavior at Forcepoint. She said 2021 will uncover the security impacts of people doing people things. Those are the normal, yet risky behaviors “we all undertake.”

Forcepoint’s Margaret Cunningham

“Whether it is creating multiple workarounds and shortcuts to accomplish goals, stockpiling data, making human errors or experiencing decreased risk perceptions, everything has an impact,” she said.

Companies need to better understand how their people adapt to, respond to and inform their environments, Cunningham said. Furthermore, they need to start implementing security practices and tools that work with humans rather than against them.

Stuart Schielack is director of channel sales at Secureworks.

Secureworks’ Stuart Schielack

“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a global impact on our lives and businesses,” he said. “As such, we’ve seen the need for the as-a-service model increase exponentially from both a consumer and business perspective. We expect we’ll see an influx of vendors leveraging MSPs to augment their solutions by adding services to scale in this subscription model era early in 2021 and throughout the new year” 

Productivity, the right solution at the right time, and ease of use are paramount to businesses, Schielack said.

“The acquisition of new customers will see a dramatic change in 2021 because of the pandemic’s global effect on people and markets,” he said. “With the increased demand for cybersecurity solutions coupled with the limited ability to meet face to face to build relationships, vendors will lean on VARs more than ever to leverage existing relationships to get solutions to the market.”

Scroll through our slideshow above to see some cybersecurity predictions for next year.