Is Agility a Key Quality for Cybersecurity Goals as We Step into 2024?

There are plenty of cybersecurity buzzwords. Resilience, collective defense, encryption. But one of the most frequently used has to be ‘agility'. With cybercriminals getting more proficient – and with constantly evolving techniques and tools – it has become even more important to remain agile in cyberspace, ensuring that businesses are protected from the next big breach. But there is a tightrope to walk when it comes to this trait.

While adopting agility is important, it is just as important not to compromise cybersecurity for speed. If a business wants to be adequately protected, there needs to be a delicate balance between both agility and efficiency, making it possible to recognise threats in record time, while also dealing with them. With this in mind, is it fair to say that agility is a key quality for cybersecurity goals in 2024?

The Meaning of Agility

When it comes to the tightrope just mentioned, the businesses that lose their balance and fall are generally the businesses that have misunderstood the word ‘agility'. This isn't just about speed. Technically, agility is the ability to be both quick and graceful. In the cybersecurity space, this means applying tools and methods that can move quickly and easily through a network, without being inhibited. To apply agility, then, businesses have their own job to do.

Achieving Agility With Data

One of the most integral ways a business can achieve agility is through focused data. Much of the time, cybersecurity breaches occur during the data migration process, which involves transferring data from one system to another. In 2024, however, so many companies are handling vast amounts of data that are useless. This is bad for two reasons. Firstly, customer-to-business relations.

With more consumers becoming aware of data harnessing, many have chosen to remove all personal information from internet completely, mitigating the risks of their data ending up in the wrong hands. For those who haven't, however, their data – and therefore a company's reputation – is on the line. If a breach occurs and a hacker claims control over data that a business didn't even need to have, then that can cause almost irreparable damage between the company and the consumers who are compromised.

Secondly, there is more chance of the network being breached if too much data exists. For many traditional – and even some modern – systems, an overabundance of data means that it has to be spread out across multiple systems. But a multi-cloud environment makes observability harder, and the ability to observe slower. This is especially true if a company doesn't have the appropriate tools. To ensure agility, it is important to ensure focused data that is specific to the company itself. If this is achieved, then observability is made easier, data migration is faster, and data handling systems are safer.

Achieving Agility By Adapting

This is something that must be secured through an efficient data collection and handling plan, with regular tests and updates, as well as training for staff. It means adapting a business's traditional processes, and actually, ‘adaption' is the next stage of agility. In 2024, cybercriminals will be finding new ways to hack organizations and steal their data, no matter how much there is or how well it has been protected. To counteract this, businesses must be able to adapt their security measures to detect threats and respond to them quickly.

This should be done by applying the right tools, video conferencing with the team for training, and working with a separate cybersecurity team that is focused clearly on the sector. While prioritizing agility with internal processes, no business knows what cybercriminals are going to try to enter and damage a network.

Take the increasing concern over AI, for instance. Throughout 2024, it is likely that cybercriminals will be utilising AI to find new ways of hacking organizations or phishing them to attain vulnerable data. Agile cybersecurity teams, however, will be able to deal with this in real time, adapting current systems to meet the new threats and defeat them before they harm the business. Without these attributes, a business is essentially putting themselves in harm's way, giving themselves no chance of fighting back once they are targeted.

With this in mind, it is indeed fair to say that agility is a key quality in 2024. As demonstrated above, this doesn't mean rushing into solutions. It means nurturing an agile system that can adapt and change according to what is happening in the cybersecurity sector.