What We Can Expect to See in 2020 from 5G, Mobile Security Controls

2019 was a big year for Blue Cedar, as we continue to empower compliance-sensitive organizations to drive secure usage of high-value mobile apps to meet their business mandates. 

As we step into 2020, we anticipate yet another year of exciting developments, and compelling advancements in the technology landscape that will enable further innovation.  

Below are a couple of trends I anticipate will unfold as we head into 2020:  

67% of employees report using a personal device at work to some degree. As enterprises continue to adopt a BYOD (bring your own device) or a CYOD (choose your own device) strategy for their end users, there will be continued push pack from users who are required to relinquish control over their entire mobile devices and the personal data stored on them. As the stakes for privacy management become higher and higher from endless breaches (54% higher in 2019 alone) and increased regulations, like GDPR and CCPA, we’ll see enterprises deploy more effective means of privacy controls for its users’ personal devices (e.g. application-specific, as opposed to device-level security controls). This will mitigate privacy invasion for end users, and enable tighter vulnerability controls for the organization, all while still providing necessary corporate data controls and end-user ergonomics via the mobile device of their choice.

5G is expected to power 1.1 billion device connections by 2025. This widespread adoption of 5G will facilitate an era of true edge compute power and data processing. Organizations will take advantage of 5G’s speed and low latency, and the mobile nature of edge devices to store and process sensitive data from any location. This evolution will trigger the need for better, more efficient means of securing edge data controls, and will also decouple the rate evolution of these controls from the devices on which these data is processed.   

3.    The low-code trend will be overrun by no-code solutions that fully enable citizen developers and increase the effectiveness of highly skilled IT professionals.

Low-code solutions will become less attractive, as the use of no-code solutions that enable developers to focus less on rote, repeatable tasks continue to grow. These tools will enable developers to focus more on sophisticated projects that are less inherently automatable. As no-code solutions empower more citizen developers to automate some of these more routine tasks and workflows, we will see a new generation of software innovation emerge, as high-value developers narrow in on the more complex issues that truly drive innovation. 

A reported 53% of online users are currently more concerned about their online privacy compared to a year ago. With heightened privacy concerns, there will be an increased focus on addressing both corporate security and user privacy concerns much earlier in the  development cycle. Dev teams will start investigating tech that provides granular controls that address both security and privacy, such as app level security controls. In parallel, teams will also investigate how to automate security integration into the development lifecycle. Cybersecurity programming skills are in short supply and there is no cost effective way for teams to address the growing dev demands through solely manual coding. Having security automatically integrated addresses the mundane nature of certain repeatable processes, freeing up developer time. More importantly, automation that brings in security tech early in the lifecycle allows the entire solution to be tested at once, again saving dev cycles. If security isn’t shifted left (i.e., brought into the dev cycle early) testing will have to be repeated once security is added in. 

It will be an exciting year for enterprise technology, and we’re thrilled to be a part of the movement as we continue to watch these evolutions unfold.