“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
True to this quote by Lenin and as articulated by Fareed Zakaria in his book, Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World, the universe is fast-forwarding at an incredible pace, leaving no signs of ambiguity in its accelerated digital version and embrace of emerging technologies during this pandemic, leading to the imminent culmination of a “new normal” for the post-pandemic era.
Technology had served as a great benefactor and a differentiator for us during this COVID-19 pandemic, which was unfortunately not available for humankind during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. Digitization has enabled us to stay at home and minimize the infection, and also for many of us to continue our professional life by working from home, in addition to enabling us to do virtually anything from online shopping to entertaining ourselves from home with a wide variety of books, movies and games.
Technology also has helped us in developing and understanding vaccines for the COVID-19 infection by deploying artificial intelligence in studying the patterns of infections and quantum computing in its capability of querying massive data.
In this drastically altered environment, let us look ahead to the security and technological landscape of 2021:
Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning. In 2021 we will see the continuation of a changed workplace, with many of the leading global firms declaring that 75% of their workforces will work from home. According to Forrester predictions, many firms will invest in conversational AI, machine learning and hardware advances to compensate for lesser on-site workforce. Organizations will focus more on solutions that deliver touchless outcomes and without human intervention. AI and ML will be increasingly used to remove humans from the equation.
In a study conducted by two researchers from New York University, AI algorithms predicted with an accuracy of 70-80% mildly ill patients who were likely to become severely ill. The researchers were confident that with more data sets, the algorithms would become more helpful to medical professionals.
Cloud Computing. With global coronavirus infections exceeding 74 million as of mid-December, the end of social distancing will not come soon. In these difficult times, cloud computing has emerged as a literal savior in ensuring business continuity and growth. It had made work from home possible by enabling workforces to access cloud applications and stay connected with each other.
According to Gartner research, cloud spending is projected to make up to 14.2% of the total global enterprise IT spending market in 2024, compared to 9.1% in 2020.
5G. As the global workforce increasingly moves toward digital collaboration, remote work and video conferencing, the need for a reliable and fast connection network has become more important and urgent than ever, thus accentuating the advances in 2021 of 5G networks, which will be 50-100 times faster than its predecessor, 4G.
Quantum Computing. Quantum computing will continue its march in 2021 and still ahead for decades. While normal computers store information in ones and zeros, quantum computers are not limited by the binary nature of current data processing and so can provide exponentially more computing power.
In a research study conducted with IBM quantum computing, using a small number of data sets for positive or negative classification of COVID-19, 90% success rate was achieved in classical computers, while a higher success rate of 94%-100% was achieved in quantum computers. Also, machine learning processes requiring more processors and time can be conveniently run in quantum computers compared to classical computers.
Cybersecurity. As remote operations have become prevalent and will remain so for the long term, an important consequence flowing from this is the diminishing of the physical security perimeter for corporate information assets. Therefore, the risk exposure faced by the organizations for their information assets is exponential, not only because of this, but also due to substantial usage of advanced technologies like cloud computing, AI, 5G networks, etc., technological shifts that, in many cases, have been accelerated by the pandemic.
Cybersecurity breaches are at all-time high and will only increase in the coming years. As a countermeasure, Gartner has suggested cybersecurity mesh – a distributed architectural approach that defines the security perimeter to be around the identity of a person or a thing.
Author’s note: The views expressed in this article are of the author’s views and do not represent that of the organization or of the professional bodies to which he is associated.