What’s in store for the tech industry in 2023?

One of the most significant things that the year 2022 taught us was how fast things could change. During the past year, while some of the tech giants struggled to stay afloat many new startups made their way into the market. This shows how predicting the future is challenging. However, we shouldn’t avoid the tech trends when we see them.

Cloud – top investment space

Globally, and in particular, the Middle East has seen a significant increase in cloud adoption over the last few years, with many organisations moving their data to the cloud. The public and private sectors in the region are leveraging cloud computing to improve their infrastructures and services and to streamline and organise their processes.

Looking at the numbers, Gartner predicts that, by 2023, worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services will rise by 20.7 per cent to a total of $591.8bn, up from $490.3bn spent in 2022. This is higher than the 18.8 per cent growth forecast for 2022. “Current inflationary pressures and macroeconomic conditions are having a push and pull effect on cloud spending,” said Sid Nag, vice president analyst at Gartner. “Cloud computing will continue to be a bastion of safety and innovation, supporting growth during uncertain times due to its agile, elastic and scalable nature.

Meanwhile, Veritas Technologies, the data management company, unveiled its international cloud survey results. The study found that the UAE organisations are making substantial progress in their transition to cloud computing, ranking as the world’s second-highest adopters of public cloud services.

Johnny Karam, managing director and vice president – International Emerging Region at Veritas Technologies, explains that the UAE is a global hub for digital transformation and is leading the charge when it comes to public cloud adoption globally. “Yet, as each new solution is introduced into an organisation’s technology stack, it adds more complexity and, if not appropriately managed, cost.”

According to Veritas research, 99 per cent of UAE organisations are overspending on cloud and are going over their allocated cloud budgets by an average of 45 per cent. “As the amount of data continues to grow year-over-year, so does the cost of storing it in the cloud, which is becoming harder to justify. Though most companies have realised advanced business strategies through cloud adoption, CEOs and boards will increasingly demand transparency surrounding the ROI of cloud spending.”

Cybersecurity – Rising threats to continue 

The cybersecurity landscape continues to worsen despite the efforts security teams have made over the years in order to combat these threats. John Pescatore, director of Emerging Security Trends at Sans Institute believes that the ransomware attacks are not going away and will remain a major threat in 2023. However, many attackers will choose an easier and less obtrusive path to gain the same critical data. “We will see more attacks target backups that are less frequently monitored, can provide ongoing access to data, and may be less secure or from forgotten older files.

Security tools that typically monitor for these attacks, like Intrusion Prevention Systems, are also often turned off or ignored because they often trigger false alarms for data backup systems. This makes it even more difficult to distinguish between false and legitimate attacks.”

Meanwhile, Migo Kedem, VP – Growth at SentinelOne, says that the cybercrime economy will continue to thrive. “The attacks we saw in 2022 are more significant than those we witnessed in 2021. However, this is not just a trend; the reasons remain: Vulnerable products, the means of communication, and the speed it takes a zero-day to become an exploit.”

The search for ‘right’ talent in tech

The cybersecurity staffing shortage places organisations at significant risk of attacks. In the event that an attack, an organisation will have difficulty detecting it as soon as possible due to lack of skilled personnel. A delay in detecting a problem will increase the impact, and this can result in a longer and more expensive recovery process.

Recent studies have determined that 3.4 million people are needed to fill the global cybersecurity workforce gap. A report released by the World Economic Forum found that 59 per cent of businesses would suffer a shortage of skills that would hinder their ability to handle a cybersecurity incident in the event that it occurred. The workforce gap increased by 26.2 per cent between 2021 and 2022, an improvement that can be attributed to data from 2022, which showed a worsening of the problem.

Karam advises that cyber professionals need to close the skills gap to understand what attackers are exploiting and why. “The year 2023 will see more offensive training and increased focus on threat hunting to improve hunt-to-detection time and examining endpoints and network traffic for anomalies to detect attacks and prevent them from causing damage. This will be especially important with an expanded attack surface from a continued hybrid workforce. At the same time, organisations won’t be able to hire during the recession and will need to upskill and make their staff better trained to defend against attacks. As such, we will also see a rise in purple teaming so that security professionals can practice with each other on penetration testing, uncovering, and defending against the newest cyberattacks.”

However, Rajesh Ganesan, president at ManageEngine, believes that finding and reskilling technology talent will continue to be challenging. “The rapid evolution of technology and the changing business landscape has put pressure on businesses to find and retain talent; the question of whether enterprises should find fresh talent or reskill existing employees is one that enterprises will have to make.

Factors like diversity and inclusion will continue to influence hiring decisions. We believe that continuing to train, educate and foster the careers of existing employees is the best course of action. That said, enterprises will have to choose for themselves how best to proceed.”

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