Cybersecurity is Center Stage in 2021 and Demand is Growing

Cybersecurity has seen incredible advancements in recent years and this has lead to a demand that continues to grow as the integration of smart technology becomes a stronger, even more instrumental part of our lives. Everyday users like you and I as well as some of the world’s leading businesses which many of us work for rely on advanced cybersecurity measures in order to protect everything from personal information, private data, and financial securities. It also seems the topic of cybersecurity can’t escape our news cycles. The topic continues to remain at the forefront of headlines in recent months. Voting freud, influence from international hacking and the recent Colonial Pipeline hack and Air India data breach are just some examples off the top of my head.

Cybersecurity is a Growing Industry

There is no denying that with the demand for cybersecurity expanding, the cybersecurity industry is growing parallel with almost 500,000 jobs reported to be opening up for availability and the Biden administration aggressively advancing for tougher cybersecurity laws. Cybersecurity funding also is showing signs of growth with $7.8 billion dollars worth of investment made toward cybersecurity firms in 2020 and the Biden administration pushing towards strong investments in the ballpark of $20 billion confidence for future growth continues.

There were some awesome products that showed up at RSA such as those looking to speed up incident response with a cybersecurity attack, and then you have those that are more delivered as a concierge service. Companies struggle to organize in order to avoid data breaches, and solutions such as XDR hope to assist the current cybersecurity solutions deployed by these companies that are also being exhausted and companies struggle to figure out how they are suppose to arm employees with proper education on third-party security and security risk assessment?

At RSA 2021, SASE and XDR Fuel Conversation

At Tuesday’s exploration of RSA, leaders in cybersecurity and attendees explored some interesting topics regarding cybersecurity. Did you know that 70% of risk management professionals characterize their organization as moderately to highly dependent on external entities.?

John Miller, Senior Vice President for Policy and General Counsel, at the Information Technology Industry Council discussed when you are looking to protect data and are assessing the security of a supplier and the supply chain . The RSA Conference 2021 took place starting this last Monday, May 17th and in it’s 30th year, the leading information security conference kicked off fully virtual this year bringing together the professionals interested in the latest from the cyber security industry.

Tuesday marks the second day of the conference, with the event taking place 8:00am – 5:30pm PT Monday, May 17 through Thursday, May 20. At this year’s Conference, the focus and celebrations might be overlapped by pandemic and cybersecurity issues on an international scale yet still focus will be on the great amount of progress the information security industry has come in such a little amount of time and also what progress and innovation helps to best prepare the community for the future.

Cybersecurity and the Distributed Workforce

When it comes to protecting a distributed workforce, one that is vulnerable due to remote work that has grown exponentially in just a few months, companies looked to RSA 2021 for near future solutions to some of the cybersecurity problems plaguing their infrastructure. At RSA attendees were hungry and often times desperate to learn more about advancements with workforce related cybersecurity technology such as SASE and security at the edge.

Cisco, who’s built a reputation in enterprise security was also present at The RSA Conference on Monday. The Chairman and CEO of Cisco Chuck Robbins shared Cisco’s visions and plans for the future including new innovations for our world’s distributed workforce.

“Security has to be at the heart of everything in the new world we live in. We believe it needs to be done with a platform approach that is simple, comprehensive and based on intelligence,” said Cisco Chairman and CEO Chuck Robbins, addressing the virtual RSA Conference audience. “There is really no perimeter in the enterprise to defend anymore. We need visibility across endpoints, users and applications as well as securing critical control points with continuous passwordless authentication.”

2020 and 2021 have proven to show the potential for cyber attacks and the technology being created to counterattack. As the demand continues to grow for cybersecurity related technology, the importance for education, and awareness trails right behind the technology itself.