Around the world, privacy regulations have been increasingly active this year, focusing on both the business and private sectors. According to Kaspersky’s ‘Privacy forecasts for 2023’ research, local law enforcement will cause the market for behavior tracking to grow even more varied in 2023.
While other measures dealt with intrusive machine-learning technologies to further secure sensitive data, some of the measures addressed commercial spying and data security practices that may harm businesses and consumers. The near future would still see a number of privacy-related challenges for businesses, particularly those connected to the present geopolitical and economic agendas, says Kaspersky.
“In 2022, we saw how regulatory activity shifted the global data market towards local players,” said Vladislav Tushkanov, privacy expert at Kaspersky. “We cannot deny that topics such as artificial intelligence or machine learning will remain in the spotlight of privacy experts in 2023. Still, we believe that the geopolitical and economic events of 2022, as well as new technological trends, will be the main factors influencing the privacy landscape in 2023.”
Preference for Local Players, The Human Factor
Based on the changes and trends that Kaspersky’s privacy specialists saw in 2022, the following forecast was created. The company’s researchers predict that the big stand-off between various stakeholders in the conversation around privacy and data collection will result in the following tendencies:
Internet balkanization will lead to a more diverse and localized behavior tracking market and checks on cross-border data transfer – Most websites have invisible trackers crawling about, gathering behavioral information that is then compiled and utilized mostly for targeted advertising. Although there are many other businesses in the behavioral advertising sector, US-based major Internet firms like Amazon, Google, and Meta are without a doubt the market leaders. Authorities are growing more hesitant to share data with foreign firms in many places, though. Because of this, companies tend to favor local competitors, which might have a variety of privacy issues. Despite the fact that large digital businesses may invest more in security than the smaller competitors, even they occasionally have data breaches. A smaller organization might not be as appealing to hackers, but it also receives less regulatory oversight.
Companies will fight the human factor in cybersecurity to curb insider threat and social engineering to protect user data – People continue to be the weakest link in cybersecurity strategies used by businesses, which would range from endpoint protection to XDR (Extended Detection & Response) and even proactive threat hunting. Less data leaks are anticipated to be the result of incorrect setup of different cloud storage options, while more breaches are anticipated to be the consequence of human mistake. Companies may spend money on user education programs that go deeper to increase cybersecurity knowledge in order to reduce these risks.
