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| Concept image for data generated by Blue Willow. |
Every year, TechTrade Asia compiles a year-end roundup, and a set of predictions for the next year. These were the posts that appeared at the end of 2023, and into early 2024, with comments on generative AI (gen AI) dominating:
Timeline 2023
"Singapore's early enthusiasm for AI has driven innovation across all sectors of the economy, and small business owners on the island will increasingly use it to facilitate growth. In fact, with more than two-thirds of the island’s entrepreneurs open to the benefits of AI, automating and streamlining time-consuming manual processes and delivering the right insights at the right time will become more prevalent as adoption expands in 2024," said Koren Wines, MD of Xero Asia.
Gen AI in 2023: settling in
"While Asia-Pacific governments have had an overall proactive stance on new technologies, including gen AI, with issues of fraud, copyright infringements and other cybercrimes surfacing, governments in the region are looking to create regulatory frameworks that provide guardrails without inhibiting innovation," said Mohan Veloo, VP Solutions Consulting, Zscaler."In 2023, we saw the establishment of the AI Verify Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation aimed at facilitating the adoption of responsible AI and promote best practices and standards for AI. And in mid-November, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced the successful conclusion of phase one of Project Mindforge. The project is aimed at developing a risk framework to encourage the responsible use of gen AI for the financial sector – and this will likely pave the way or act as best practice for other sectors."
Gen AI in 2024: the reality check
Reinhart Hansen, Director of Technology within the Office of the CTO at Imperva said: "Although the continued advancement of gen AI is inevitable, the hype surrounding it is due for a reality check in 2024. Like most technologies, its adoption will encompass both beneficial and detrimental aspects, often marked by exaggerated claims, particularly in its early developmental stages."This is where the concept of 'AI washing' enters the scene, with businesses falsely advertising AI integration in their products or services, misleading consumers. In this evolving landscape, one thing is certain: cybercriminals will leverage AI to build new attack vectors never seen before and generate new variants of existing vulnerabilities, leading to a surge of new zero-day attacks. The industry will need to work diligently to respond to and mitigate these threats, ensuring that the promising future of AI remains secure and beneficial for all."
*A zero-day vulnerability is one which has not been addressed yet, because it was unknown to those in a position to do something about it.
“Ransomware continues to be the biggest threat to business continuity,” said Dave Russell, VP of Enterprise Strategy at Veeam.
“It’s the number one cause of outages today, and protecting against it is hampering digital transformation efforts. Furthermore, although companies are increasing their spend on protection, less than a third of companies believe they can recover quickly from a small attack. The findings in this year’s Veeam Data Protection Trends Report highlight the need for continued cyber vigilance, and the importance of every organisation (ensuring) they have the right protection and recovery capabilities."
Security in a post-gen AI world
Andrew Shikiar, Executive Director and CMO at FIDO Alliance, said that AI will indeed drive cyberattacks - but not in the expected ways.
“Deepfake technology and AI-powered malware will continue to evolve but actually account for relatively few data breaches in 2024. Businesses and individuals already fall victim to social engineering and phishing en masse - techniques that have now been supercharged in effectiveness and scale by AI. Social engineering is already the cause of the majority of attacks, and now any fraudster, anywhere in the world, can generate word-perfect phishing attacks that are near-impossible to detect - at a fraction of the effort of creating a deepfake.
"This will be the biggest AI-driven security threat of the year. In fact, our recent study found that over half the population (54%) have already seen an increase in suspicious messages and scams, while 52% believe they have become more sophisticated. As this problem grows, businesses and service providers will look to non-phishable solutions to better protect themselves and their employees, and secure one of the biggest weak links in any organisation's cyberdefences."
A-Z of tech predictions
5 is for 5G
Splunk predicted new types of assaults in 2024, but also said that AI will not be the only tool opening the door to new forms of attacks, or within a wider range of industries. "5G will also present opportunities for cybercriminals by expanding the attack surface in ways that aren’t yet protected," said Simon Davies, SVP and GM in APAC at Splunk.
A is for agility
B is for breaches in the supply chain
"My prediction for 2024 is that high impact, sophisticated attacks will hide behind the themes of AI/machine learning (ML) and create larger data breaches much like MOVEit and other supply chain attacks,” says Mark Ostrowski, Head of Engineering US, East for Check Point.
C is for cloud
"Enterprises are now diving headfirst into the realm of multicloud and hybrid cloud strategies by strategically weaving together the finest offerings from different cloud providers tailored to their business needs," said Jay Jenkins, Akamai's CTO, Cloud Computing."This trend is set to continue well into 2024, as organisations embark on a quest to finetune their cloud expenditures, elevate the effectiveness and dependability of their applications. As the approach matures, it's not just about optimising costs — it's a journey toward technical and operational agility to unlock the full potential of distributed architectures."
"Embracing distributed compute is merely the prelude; the key to success depends on the widespread adoption of distributed databases, which should provide the foundation for developers to create innovative architectural models. The cloud revolution is not just about adoption, but a combination of optimisation and architectural evolution," he added.
C is also for currencies
D is for data and data centres
Terry Ray, SVP of Data Security at Imperva said: "As the power of AI hinges on intelligent data, in 2024, organisations will realize that data security is more important than ever. For years, organisations have hoarded data – with much of it now unknown and hard to secure. This lack of control, in turn, increases risk without adding value. At the same time, organisations have wrongly assumed that a lot of their data isn’t worth protecting, only prioritising data classified as highly sensitive and forgetting about their 'low risk' data, such as publicly-available data. This assumption is not only wrong but dangerous.
"Firstly, AI systems, especially powerful language models like GPT, lean on this data to shape predictions and decisions, so holding on to unused – and especially out-of-date or inaccurate – data could come back to haunt businesses. Adding to this risk is the rise of 'shadow AI', with organisations unaware of how employees use AI applications and what data they feed the models behind them.
"Beyond this, every byte of data that an organisation holds is a security risk: the high-risk data can be stolen and weaponised, while hackers can access the low-risk publicly-available data as a place to live, watch, and wait for the perfect moment to steal the crown jewels. Organisations must come to grips with the urgency of regaining control over their data – understanding where it is, how it is being used, and whether it even needs to be stored at all."
E is for edge computing
F is for fantasy and fraud from AI
G is for globalisation
H is for hybrid work
I is for innovation
J is for jobs
K is for killer apps
L is for large language models (LLMs)
M is for social media
M is also for marketing
N is for networking
O is for operations
Peter Marelas, Chief Architect APJ, New Relic, said gen AI has sparked a
review and rebirth of existing AIOps technologies. "Traditionally,
AIOps solutions use a one-size-fits-all approach to pattern recognition
that requires significant amounts of tuning to account for nuances
between customers' behaviours and patterns. This manual approach limits
the effectiveness of AIOps systems, particularly when an organisation's
business patterns fall in the tails of the bell curve," he said.
"Moving
forward, we expect to see a resurgence in AIOps research and
technologies that tailor the algorithms to the needs of each specific
customer. What we will see are competitive algorithms that are
automatically trained to imitate and forecast a customer’s scenarios and
business patterns to produce more accurate forecasts."
P is for predictive, proactive personalisation
Q is for quantum computing
R is for recovery
S is for sustainability
T is for trust
U is for unified data
V is for verticals
Finance
"Mid-sized and community banking institutions across have an opportunity to leapfrog larger incumbent players, comparatively unincumbered by heavy legacy systems. We are seeing financial institutions accelerate their digital transformation efforts to develop tailored credit solutions and value-added microservices for customers, as well as better risk management processes across the lending lifecycle. Emerging markets like Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines are markets we are watching closely on this front," said Isabel Fernandez, EVP, Lending at Finastra.
V is for verticals, continued
Healthcare
Logistics & transportation
Manufacturing
"Many still have an outdated view of the cloud merely being a data collector and backup function, as we know if from our private lives. But the real potential and power doesn’t lie in storing data or even in linking machines. The real transformative leap comes when cloud-based software services connect humans and machines and thus help manufacturers simplify complex processes and make smarter decisions," said Anders Billesø Beck, VP of Strategy and Innovation at Universal Robots."(In) 2024, manufacturers stand to gain from these advancements, achieving higher quality, reduced downtime, better predictability, and cost optimisation. This transition is a strategic necessity, supporting the shift towards high-volume, high-mix production, resilient supply chains, competitive data utilisation, and sustainability goals."
Public sector
Retail
Telecommunication
Travel
V is also for video
W is for women in tech
X is for extended reality
Y is for it's about you
Z is for Zero Trust
"In 2024, we will also see continued debate around AI regulations and safety. Global regulatory bodies are proactively responding to the advancements in technology, with recent legislation emerging in China and anticipated regulations from the EU. Policymakers are also exploring ways to leverage existing data protection laws to address AI misuse. In anticipation of these, adopting a Zero-Trust approach becomes crucial to safeguard against social engineering scams," said Nilesh Jain, VP, Southeast Asia & India, Trend Micro.
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