Just like New Year’s resolutions, predictions are a rite  of passage, an opportunity for us to  take stock of our hopes and concerns for the coming year. Cybersecurity is already fast moving and unpredictable, cloud security has shifted the rate and pace of innovation into overdrive. While these predictions are based on trends that have already started to unfold, as an industry, we should brace ourselves for the inevitable surprises that accompany the unpredictable nature of our industry. That said these are the trends we believe will shape cloud security in 2024:

Cloud runtime hits prime time:

The idea of runtime is not new and has been used across different attack vectors for a while. In the cloud, however, until recently, it’s been a major blind spot, due mainly to technological constraints. Emerging technologies such as eBPF are driving innovation in cloud security across the board, but especially in runtime, where it is a critical foundational technology for providing much needed “boots on the cloud.” We believe the ability to see and monitor events in runtime will make cloud-based attack detection and response the “killer app” for cloud security in 2024. However, the benefits from runtime visibility and monitoring don’t end there. In addition to attack detection and response, runtime cloud sensors can also aid security functions across the cloud lifecycle, including discovery, vulnerability management, posture management, and IAM.

GenAI, and GenAI again:

Technologies such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s Llama2 are expanding into broader use and are also expected to make a dent in the cloud security space. In 2024 we expect to see further enhancements in the ability of these models to intake larger inputs, allowing us to prompt them with more customer-specific context. In other words, they will be able to capture more intelligent insights across broader data sets. That not only allows security teams to make better decisions (with fewer mistakes and less noise), it will enable faster, more accurate attack detection. Additionally, 2024 AI models are going to be far more flexible and adaptable to user-specific cases and environments. This will also improve attack detection and provide more security practitioners with more personalized, actionable insights. 

Crypto miner attacks on Kubernetes increase:

The combination of bitcoin’s steady upward trajectory and a problematic global economic climate has made crypto mining a focus for cybercriminals. As the notorious bank robber Willie Sutton famously said, “it’s where the money is.” Despite bitcoin’s dramatic ups and downs, crypto mining has been a cash cow for North Korea, which has made $3.4B off of crypto hacks  — the bulk of its military budget — since 2017. And that’s largely without targeting Kubernetes, which has exponentially more machines, making it an appealing target for malicious actors to deploy cryptocurrency miners and other backdoors. With so many businesses struggling to keep pace with the rapidly evolving  state of cloud security, we believe that gaps in Kubernetes security will get worse before they get better, with 2024 being the year that organizations start to understand what they need to do to reduce their exposure.

Wishing you a happy, healthy and sweet New Year!