In 2023, AI hit the mainstream and brought with it opportunities, challenges, and a fair amount of apprehension. Organizations are racing to understand how AI-driven technology — and any emerging tech for that matter — will impact and improve not only their own business but also that of their customers.
Yet making strategic business and technology decisions to optimize productivity, efficiency, and speed in today’s world is not without its challenges. Making these decisions against the backdrop of economic downturn, geographically dispersed and likely shrinking teams, heightened cybersecurity risks, and greater pressures on just about every department is no small feat.
As Appfire leaders share their visionary points of view on the year ahead (which are listed below), there is a common thread among them: Silos need to come down for digital business to advance. Whether we’re talking about:
- Equipping knowledge workers and teams with technology to collaborate more effectively in hybrid-remote environments
- Bringing together cybersecurity and line of business leaders to make AI tech adoption decisions with security at the forefront
- Converging DevOps and Agile practices to support better software development
Breaking down silos means greater collaboration, and collaboration fuels progress.
Prediction 1: To optimize hybrid-remote collaboration, organizations will need to prioritize application security
Highly distributed work environments increased demand for tools to help knowledge workers and teams do their jobs effectively, regardless of workers’ physical locations. This led to a rush to bring a variety of new applications to market, and, in particular, apps to support teams and organizations to be productive, efficient and collaborative.
A word of caution about this, though. Security cannot be an afterthought. Failure to prioritize the secure development, maintenance and usage of these applications carries with it far-reaching risks and implications for organizations, employees and their customers.
In 2024, the nature of work will continue to be decentralized with hybrid-remote organizational structures. In tandem, the need for application security will only grow. Specifically, the security of applications that organizations build or buy to help drive collaboration and productivity will become a larger, more critical focus. This will require organizations to abide by “secure by design” principles with DevOps and security teams working closely together to ensure that tighter, more thorough security controls are embedded in applications from the initial development phase.
--Ed Frederici, CTO
Prediction 2: Defending against AI-related threats will require a proactive approach from business and cybersecurity leaders
News about AI developments has taken center stage this year and for good reason: The technology is advancing very fast and is now accessible to everyone, regardless of skill level. From a security perspective, a big debate of 2023 had to do with which side will come out ahead — attackers who are weaponizing AI to increase the sophistication of their attack methods or defenders who are using AI to enhance and expand their ability to catch attackers before they infiltrate environments (and/or quickly detect them when they strike).
In 2024, cybersecurity leaders will need to be extremely proactive and vigilant about identifying the concerns associated with malicious actors’ behavior leveraging AI. It will also be critical for cybersecurity teams to oversee the decision-making related to AI adoption in the workplace, specifically in the realm of project management where AI tools can be particularly useful. This means taking a more hands-on approach to providing guidance and evaluation support for various departments within the organization as they determine the best way to securely integrate AI into business operations.
--Doug Kersten, CISO
Prediction 3: Breaking down silos will result in higher-quality software development
In 2024, we’ll see a convergence of DevOps and Agile practices with the goal of breaking down silos to improve collaboration. When done right, we’ll see faster, higher-quality software development. This will also introduce greater adoption of tools that facilitate continuous integration and delivery to streamline the path from development to deployment.
Additionally, more organizations will embrace the cloud for its strategic advantages. More specifically, businesses will shift their focus from solely leveraging cloud migration for cost and time efficiencies to embracing its strategic advantages, especially within the growing AI sector. Many companies lack the in-house resources to adopt AI, so they will turn to AI-as-a-service on cloud platforms to leverage this powerful technology.
--Paul Lechner, VP of Product Management
Appfire’s 2024 predictions see optimized collaboration across several functions, from cybersecurity to development to lines of business, with AI having a significant impact now and in the future.
The speed at which organizations can embrace change and harness AI, while also adopting policies and practices that reduce risk and support the goals of the business and the needs of its workforce, will dictate whether or not they have an advantage in the New Year.