AI Innovation Meets Digital Resilience

Splunk Inc., the cybersecurity and observability provider, today released Splunk’s 2024 Predictions detailing how Artificial Intelligence (AI) will reshape business resilience in the year ahead. This annual report features three editions - Executive, Security and Observability - and identifies trends across these key areas for businesses to be prepared in the new era of AI.

The 2024 Predictions feature insights from Splunk senior leaders and technology experts on the future technological landscape:

What Executives Must Know

• Resilience will become non-negotiable as governments around the world mandate it. In response to the rise of new threats and the critical importance of digital systems on economic output, regulators are beginning to enact strong compliance frameworks and strict governance on how businesses should prepare for and operate through adverse events.
• Fueled by the AI boom, data privacy regulation will accelerate. As a consequence, an abundance of established companies will be unable to (or choose not to) provide their services in certain regions. “Governments around the world are becoming more active in ensuring that industry is meeting their obligations around data privacy,” says Simon Davies, SVP and general manager in APAC.

What Security Experts Must Know

• AI will take on security tasks, alleviating skills gaps and talent shortages. Instead of replacing jobs, AI will be more like an assistant who takes on repetitive, mundane and labour-intensive tasks.
• Power to the people: Threats will become more distributed and democratised. Splunk anticipates new types of assaults in 2024, and AI won’t 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.
• Collaboration and integration will become critical for resilience. In Splunk’s 2023 State of Security report, 62% of respondents (up from 54% the previous year) disclosed that cybersecurity incidents took down business-critical applications between once and twice a month. To avoid cyber-caused downtime, teamwork will be non-negotiable — and that trajectory will continue into 2024.
• Ransomware actors will diversify their portfolios. While ransomware might not become more destructive in 2024, cybercriminals will continue to look for techniques and targets in new and creative ways – and increasingly rely on zero day threats to infiltrate networks.

What Observability Experts Must Know

• CIOs and CTOs will cut back on their architecture and infrastructure spending, making this the year of mindful budgets and massive disruption. Though people are excited about AI, they are also nervous – CIOs and CTOs will feel the demand to get more from less.
• Tool consolidation will be necessary. Consolidating monitoring tools into a single observability system frees up talents such as engineers and system admins to focus on an organization's core business. Meanwhile, OpenTelemetry is a rising star and might steal the show in 2024.

Edge lives up to our high expectations in 2024. First, there’ll be an explosion of consumer use cases. Then, very quickly – especially in retail, banking and media – the edge will become a hot topic for IT development and security departments.