Expert Engineers Share The Top Tech Trends To Know

Which technology trends are capturing the attention of engineering experts? 

In a year of headline-making technology decisions by Fortune 500 companies, and a sharp uptick in organizations turning to artificial intelligence, we asked Sayers engineering leaders which technology developments hold the most potential to enhance security and efficiency.

The internal roundtable of engineering leaders highlighted several trends and their impact. Consider these highlights as part of evaluating your own organization’s future-readiness.

Technology Trends: Which One Surprises And Is On The Rise?

Our engineering experts answered the question, “Which technology trend surprised you this year and seems to be picking up?”

Answers included:

Continuous threat exposure management (CTEM). The broader scope of CTEM beyond traditional security enables companies to better secure their organization as a whole. 

Chris Willis, VP of Cybersecurity and Network Engineering at Sayers, says:

“CTEM’s focus this year is to understand your organization’s true exposure, not just your known public facing vulnerabilities. That involves going beyond traditional security controls, such as endpoint security and network perimeter security, and delving into areas including social media, API’s, OT and IoT, dark web and more to see what exposure a company actually has.” 

Increased adoption of cloud security platforms. At least one of our engineering experts expressedsurprise we didn’t see this one already to protect cloud-based infrastructure, applications, and data.

Ken Wisniewski, Senior Security Architect at Sayers, says:

“We finally seem to be seeing more traction with the cloud security platforms. We’ve been talking about it for a long time, and it seems to finally be starting to pick up. We’re getting to that critical mass now, as opposed to just early adopters.”

AI’s role in resiliency management. If planning and managing your organization’s business resiliency program has taken more time and effort than you expected, AI may provide relief.

Kevin Finch, Senior Business Continuity Architect at Sayers, says:

“I’ve been to several conferences and you can hardly get people to attend sessions on anything else but AI. AI will make resiliency management a lot easier for people, especially the initial process of creating a plan.”

The journey to passwordless user authentication. Organizations are starting to evaluate and adopt Fast IDentity Online (FIDO) open protocols for phishing-resistant, multi-factor authentication (MFA) of online users, which moves us closer to passwordless solutions. FIDO2 authentication can be embedded into a device, use physical tokens, or incorporate alternatives such as PIN codes or biometric credentials.

Joe Schnell, Senior Cybersecurity Architect at Sayers, says:

“People have been talking about these technologies and are now starting to act on them. We’re seeing organizations implement phishing-resistant MFA using FIDO, YubiKeys, and other methods. They’re having conversations and adopting passwordless so there is nothing for the adversary to steal.”

Insider threat management aimed at high-risk users. Organizations that want to add an extra layer of protection to insider threat management security are realizing they may need a more targeted approach. According to Mimecast:

“8% of users are causing 80%  of incidents. Not all users are equal in their security awareness and the human risk they pose.”

Jason Marocchi, Cybersecurity Engineer at Sayers, says:

“I’m excited to see, especially around security awareness, how we start to curb that minor subsection of users by tailoring training and security to high-risk users.”  Something Gartner defines as Security Behavior and Culture Programs (SBCP).

Network-as-a-service (NaaS) and AI networking. Three technology vendors in particular are making strong strides here. Alkira is looking to reinvent NaaS as the fastest way to the cloud. Nile’s NaaS offering provides a complete solution for wired and wireless, with built-in AI to help automate tasks as well as network design and operation. Arista offers AI networking that combines AI with networking infrastructure for greater automation and productivity in network management.

Roland Olczak, Senior Network Engineer at Sayers, says:

“Many of today’s traditional data centers are siloed, with gateways providing interconnectivity. AI will unify many of these siloed data centers. The term data center ultimately will be replaced by the term ‘AI center.’ ”

Tracking The Rise Of Emerging Technologies And Partners

For the roundtable’s second half, Sayers engineering experts shared their views on “Which emerging technology or partner are you most excited about currently?”

Responses included:

Simplifying the journey to passwordless. HYPR and other players are helping make the passwordless journey easier for organizations. HYPR addresses the challenges of managing hardware tokens by turning smartphones into FIDO keys for a modern approach to passwordless user authentication. 

Schnell says:

“According to Verizon’s 2023 Data Breach Investigations Report, 86% of web application breaches involve stolen credentials as the initial access point. Seeing organizations starting to open up to the passwordless journey is certainly something I find exciting.”

Networking designed for AI. Exponential growth in AI applications and machine learning workloads requires new approaches to networking, including interconnecting AI clusters made up of thousands or even 100,000s of XPUs. 

Olczak says:

“Arista, Nile, and Alkira are three exciting partners for their role in network-as-a-service and AI networking. I’m especially excited about Arista Etherlink™ AI networking platforms that are designed for the most demanding AI workloads and are compatible with the emerging Ultra Ethernet Consortium open standards.”

Enhanced threat hunting and risk prioritization. In the Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management (CAASM) space, Armis has made two strategic acquisitions this year:

• CTCI (Cyber Threat Cognitive Intelligence), which is AI-powered pre-attack threat-hunting technology. Armis will integrate CTCI’s technology into Armis Centrix™ to create an early warning attack alert system for governments and enterprises.
• Silk Security, a leading platform for cyber risk prioritization and remediation. 

Integrating Silk’s technology into Armis offerings provides security teams with a consolidated view of all their security vulnerabilities on one platform. They also can more easily manage and track remediation progress.

Marocchi says:

“Our clients are inundated with having to prioritize the risks they see, whether it’s in a cloud environment or on-premise. Having tools that help highlight the most severe and actively exploited can help reduce that workload.”

Simplifying the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform. While SASE has been around for years, technology providers are offering new capabilities to make SASE easier to implement and manage.

Wisniewski says: 

“Organizations that aren’t already invested in larger platforms or committed to a single vendor technology ecosystem would do well to consider Cato Networks SASE platform. There are bigger, best-of-breed SASE platform providers out there, but there’s something to be said for Cato’s simplicity and ease of use.”

Automating threat exposure management. Statistics from Ernst & Young say organizations are only using 10-20% of their security tools. That’s due in part to knowledge gaps among security teams in how to configure and manage them. 

Solutions that validate and automate security controls within organizations will help ensure clients are using their technology investments. 

Willis says:

“In the threat exposure management space, emerging partners such as Zafran Security and Reach Security are using integrated threat intelligence and automation to help identify vulnerabilities such as misconfigured, unconfigured, and non-updated appliances. Then they can make those needed changes for you with a click of a button.”

Growth of Sayers services. Sayers has continued to expand and enrich our offerings of services and solutions for cloud, cybersecurity, and IT infrastructure.

Wollam says:

“Based on what I’ve seen over the last three to four months, I’m most excited about our people. Sayers services have grown so much in the last few months. I work with a lot of different partners and platforms, but the one I’m most excited about is our own services.”

Questions? Contact us at Sayers today to discover extensive technology solutions, services, and expertise to cover all areas of your business.