North America 2021: Making the Smart Move in Digitization

What is in store for the IT industry in 2021 and how will working from home, as a result of the pandemic, change priorities to move to the cloud? EPAM’s Chief Information Security Officer, Sam Rehman, weighs in on some of the cybersecurity trends facing the IT industry.

Evolving cyber threat

Sam Rehman, chief information security office at EPAM, said that these shifts, coupled with working from home, bring with them a whole host of cybersecurity and data protection concerns.

“Our attack surface now is exponentially larger than where we were before. It makes it very difficult because imagine if you're protecting a house with 18 windows and four doors,” Rehman said.

“The attacker can come in through any one of those doors at any point in time. You have to take the extra measure to put in controls to protect all of those. What is your focus?” he said.

“The sad thing about cybersecurity is you always have some aspect of it playing catch up.”

Rehman anticipates that we will see more machine learning-assisted attacks in the coming year and organizations will need to be prepared for that.

EPAM provides training to its clients and staff to help respond to these evolving threats. One sector that has become more prominent of late is retail, especially with the growing shift to e-commerce, given its handling of financial transactions and customer IDs.

The original article can be found here.