Ian Jansen van Rensburg, director of solutions engineering & lead technologist at VMware SSA.

There’s only one given when it comes to cybersecurity – it’s constantly changing. The landscape is littered with determined adversaries, with arsenals of increasingly complex and sophisticated tools at their fingertips. With a new year dawning, we can expect fresh challenges for enterprises, security professionals and individuals. But what predictions do the experts have for cybersecurity in 2021?

Ian Jansen van Rensburg, senior systems engineer and lead technologist at VMware Sub-Saharan Africa, says that with technology evolving at a fast pace, it couldn’t be a better time to be a cyber attacker. “Next year, I predict there will be more cloud breaches, transparent scamming tactics for financial applications (online banking), as well as AI integration. In addition, data privacy and ransomware will still be one of the focus points, as well as internal attacks through employees.” The skills gap in cybersecurity within the ‘all software-defined’ world will continue to widen, he adds.