In 2024, the UKI security landscape will continue to evolve at pace, driven by the persistent threat posed by adversaries, by developing local and European legal obligations, and by technology and business innovation.

Cyberattack volumes, frequencies, and sophistication will continue to grow, bolstered by new AI-backed cyberattack methods and a mature criminal ecosystem and marketplace. Are security practitioners, the Executive Board and the C-suite, ready to meet the challenge? The bottom line is that the corporate security function must protect critical business assets with what is available to hand, within the confines of a finite security budget and defined by a clear understanding of acceptable versus unacceptable cyber risk.

In the face of all these challenges, security teams remain understaffed and are thus driven to outsource certain capabilities that cannot be performed in-house. Key security themes in 2024 include the rise of Cyber Risk assessments, balancing proactive security with enhanced detection and response capabilities, incident response, attack surface management, vendor consolidation and security integration, supply chain security, and the adoption of Zero Trust and Cyber Resiliency principles and frameworks.