It’ll soon be commonplace for data to move laterally from one company’s applications and servers to another and back, 100s or 1000s of times per user action, across a diverse set of network and application environments. In this environment, perimeter-based cybersecurity isn’t effective, so the data itself must be secured as it moves. Cybersecurity at the user level is evolving towards this as well, with a shift to tokens, authentication, and single sign-on (SSO).

As threats become more frequent, more sophisticated, and more dangerous, organisations begin to struggle with managing cybersecurity on their own. The needs are too complex to be managed by the general IT department, and there simply aren’t enough information security professionals to go around. As a result, managed security roles such as Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) and engineers with full-stack expertise will be increasingly important to provide for this gap in internal capability.

To manage risk and security in the near future, companies must focus on balancing the need for rapid innovation with the cost of modernising and securing legacy IT systems. Increasing cloud adoption will require that all organisations manage endpoint security. Some new applications need the data itself to be secured so that it’s safe from attack while moving between systems, or so thoroughly anonymised that user information is protected. However, organisations who do well at securing data will be able to take on daring innovations their competitors can’t risk, or protect themselves from public relations disasters that their less-secure competitors will inevitably face when customer data is breached.

With HomeKit and HealthKit, Apple has brought its platform model of value sharing into very private realms: users’ homes and health. As an early example of the Internet of Thing’s (IoT) potential, these platforms share and combine data for the user’s convenience and personal benefit. However, they also represent an opportunity to share your data – either with organisations for research purposes, or with Apple to inform what options the platform offers you in the future. This opportunity creates a new, combined cybersecurity need at the user level as well as in the organisations that are receiving/ using the data, which will become commonplace in the near future.