On a brighter note, many other predictions for the next year are rooting for the digitalized corporations.

The year 2020 did not turn out the way many people expected. The pandemic has disrupted nearly every human activity and endeavor. That said, it is also worth noting that the coronavirus has been a catalyst that greatly accelerated DX.

Going forward, change is only going to accelerate as we head into a new post-pandemic reality. With that in mind, the team at Splunk has put together their predictions for 2021, covering three segments: data security, IT ops and emerging technologies.

Data security

2020 was a year of unprecedented challenge for IT security teams. With workers logging into company servers remotely via personal devices and overwhelming existing digital collaboration tools, pre-pandemic corporate network protections were invalidated to a great extent, and attack vectors are coming up with new tricks to infiltrate the vulnerable corporations. Some predictions on this front:

  • Pandemic workforce disruption will drive a greater focus on endpoint security and the Zero Trust model
  • Supply chain attacks mean that the bad guys will not just hack an organization. They will hack your stuff
  • Attackers will capitalize on pandemic-themed and WFH-related vulnerabilities to tailor more-effective phishing (and now vishing, too) emails and other scams
  • Faster-moving DX will include more AI in the security operations center and much more

IT ops

The pandemic has thrown IT organizations headlong into the Data Age in which ubiquitous and interconnected digital technologies use data to enrich every decision and enable real-time action. In this era, IT leaders have to finally live up to a decade’s worth of promises to evolve from maintaining a basic utility to being a strategic partner that provides innovative IT services:

  • CIOs who do not nail down instrumentation and automation are going to lose their jobs
  • Ultimate success with automation will depend on a surprising factor: the human element
  • Cloud complexity will drive a rush to better, more integrated monitoring tools
  • The pandemic will inspire a new generation of immersive tools for digital collaboration
  • Moving fast breaks things. There will be a lot of failure and waste in 2021 and much more

Emerging technologies

Organizations that were already fairly mature in their cloud adoption are pushing into automation and machine learning. Those that can really push the envelope are planning for 5G, investigating augmented reality or blockchain, or deploying edge computing solutions. The Data Age—defined by greater interconnectedness through ubiquitous digital technologies—was already here. Now it is really here and is creating an impact!

  • AI and Machine Learning are being held back by their own limitations
  • Defense against adversarial learning will improve in the next few years
  • Two-factor authentication will become the widespread norm, not an option
  • Despite rising appetite, 5G will not be a hit in 2021
  • AR/VR’s breakthrough application will be immersive collaborative communication and much more