Speaking with John Aisien and Nikfar Khaleeli of Blue Cedar, Digital Journal gained an insight into the key technological developments impacting upon businesses in 2020. These take the form of four predictions, which are outlined below.
Prediction #1: BYOD and CYOD
The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Choose Your Own Device (CYOD) trend that many businesses have adopted will be met with employee dismay as increased regulations and newer privacy concerns will flag issues relating to device security.
According to John Aisien, CEO of Blue Cedar: “67 percent of employees report using a personal device at work. As enterprises continue to adopt a BYOD or a CYOD strategy for their employees, there will be continued push back from employees who are required to relinquish control over their mobile devices and the private data stored on them.”
Aisien adds that in relation to security breaches, “as the stakes for privacy management become higher and higher (54 percent higher in 2019 alone) and increased regulations, like General Data Protection Regulation and California Consumer Privacy Act, we will see enterprises deploy more effective means of privacy control for its employee’s personal devices.”
These measures are likely to include application-specific security in addition to security measures operating at device-level. This could help to mitigate feelings of privacy breaches in the minds of workers, used to the freedoms of working at home or remote accessing when at off-site meetings.
Prediction #2: Low code trend
The low-code trend, which has gained traction in 2019, will most likely be over-taken by a similarity significant no-code trend. These solutions will trigger a new cohort of citizen developers, permitting IT professionals to deal with more complex matters, according to Nikfar Khaleeli, VP of Products at Blue Cedar. Low-code development refers to programming platforms that allow people to create applications without having to write much code.
Prediction #3: 5G
5G will bring about a new era of complete edge compute capabilities. While edge computing offers many advantages, it also requires robust cybersecurity measures. 5G is an advanced wireless technology that has begun wide deployment in 2019.
With 5G, Aisien tells us: “The widespread deployment of 5G will facilitate an era of true edge computer power. With that evolution will be an integral need for better, more efficient edge device security that can withstand the next generation of computational power and is capable of managing and protecting mobile devices at the edge.”
Prediction #4: DevSecOps
DevSecOps will shift left as enterprises prioritize security and employee privacy, explains Khaleeli. DevSecOps is the philosophy of integrating security practices within the DevOps (development and operations) process.
“A reported 53 percent of online users are currently more concerned about their online privacy compared to a year ago”, Khaleeli notes. “With heightened privacy concerns, there will be an increased focus on addressing both corporate security and user privacy concerns much earlier in the development cycle.”
This means that software development professionals will begin examining technology that meets security and privacy expectations of users. This can be realized, according to Khaleeli, by “having security automatically integrated addresses the mundane nature of certain repeatable processes, freeing up developer time”, plus a level of automation “that brings in security tech early in the lifecycle allows the entire solution to be tested at once, again saving development cycles.”
