Sage Advice - Cybersecurity Blog

Futurist, author, and consultant Mike Walsh spends 300-some-odd days a year traveling the globe researching technology trends, keynoting industry events, and guiding organizational leaders through the complexities of digital disruption. Appropriately, then, his 2018 CyberCrime Symposium presentation took attendees on a whirlwind tour of the transformative forces they’ll manage if they want to thrive in an increasingly AI-driven world. As he told the info-sec and privacy officers in attendance, the goalposts that marked 2020 as AI’s future zone have been pushed back a decade or so, but he warned them not to get complacent.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is, both literally and figuratively, a lot of things. At this point in its evolution, it’s something of a paradox. While IoT as an infosec topic pursues cybersecurity professionals wherever they go, its nature is to blend into its surroundings. In fact, in his presentation at the 2016 CyberCrime Symposium, Chris Poulin likened it to the iconic chameleo-creature from the Predator film franchise.

Cybersecurity professionals are already overtaxed trying to secure all the devices that make their networks hum, not to mention the multiplying user devices seeking access. Now they’re facing the exploding Internet of Things (IoT), which makes BYOD, the cloud, and similar security concerns seem pale by comparison. The title of Uri Rivner’s and Sam Curry’s 2015 CyberCrime Symposium presentation — IoT: When Things Crawl into Your Corporate Network” — aptly summed up the challenge.