1. The outlook for cybersecurity
In January 2024, we released our Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2024, which explored the key trends for the year ahead, set to impact economies and societies. It warned of opportunities and challenges in areas of skills shortages, but also the rise of new technologies such as AI.
We’ll unpack these challenges in more detail in the stories below.
The report also looked at growing cyber inequity, which was the theme of our recent Annual Meeting on Cybersecurity.
Some of the key findings from the Cybersecurity Outlook 2024. Image: World Economic Forum
In January, the 2025 edition of the Cybersecurity will be published, identifying future cybersecurity challenges. The report helps executives understand cybersecurity trends that will influence the world in the year to come and recommends steps to navigate their organizations through these challenges.
2. Cybersecurity talent challenges
There is a shortage of nearly 4 million cybersecurity professionals worldwide, and with ever-increasing demand, there’s no sign of this challenge abating.
In April, the Forum released a Strategic Cybersecurity Talent Framework, designed to support public and private sectors to develop and nurture talent.
And throughout the year, we explored the solutions to the talent gap across both video and text.
3. The impact of emerging technologies
Alongside a talent shortage, cybersecurity professionals and teams are also grappling with the impact of emerging technology, such as generative AI.
While these technologies in a digital age offer huge potential to boost growth and productivity, they raise new cybersecurity risks. Our October report, Navigating Cyber Resilience in the Age of Emerging Technologies: Collaborative Solutions for Complex Challenges, explored just this and how to enhance cyber resilience.
The risk to resilience. Image: World Economic Forum
4. Boosting cyber resilience
Against the backdrop of growing cyber risks, how do you go about boosting cyber resilience? A November white paper explored the concept. Individuals and organizations cannot prevent all malicious attacks or cyber failures and the need to embrace the rise in digital communications has led to the rise of cyber resilience.
“Cyber resilience goes beyond cybersecurity, preventing attacks or simply getting back to operations-as-usual – it is about an organization’s ability to minimize the impact of significant cyber incidents on its primary goals and objectives,” explains the paper.
And, as the global outage in July showed the world, cyber resilience is about more than just preventing or mitigating against cyber attacks, its importance and impact is much broader.
5. Tackling cybercrime
Tackling cybercrime requires ongoing collaboration between public and private sectors. A Forum white paper, released in November, looks at how existing successes and partnerships can be built on to tackle cybercrime and disrupt cybercrime groups.
Across the year, we looked at some of the challenges, and also the solutions to an ever-evolving challenge – some more unusual than others.
The author, Akshay Joshi, is the Head of the World Economic Forum’s Centre for Cybersecurity. Before joining the Forum in 2015, Joshi had over a decade of experience in management roles in sectors including maritime transport and public relations.
The views and opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of TRENDS.
This Op-Ed was first published by the World Economic Forum.