Top 5 Network and Security Predictions for 2023

Welcome to 2023, a year that promises to be another one full of turbulence, coming back from the pandemic, and facing the current hectic economic climate and downturn which in effect brings new challenges to enterprises. They have to develop (new) resilient strategies, resist threats, improve operational efficiency and reduce costs. This is where network automation comes into play and shines. And as if this is not enough already, further continuation of adopting hybrid working, network modeling, risk mitigation, and cloud adoption all makeup for a very busy year ahead.

Network security and privacy will no doubt be top of mind across all verticals, especially with users needing to access critical apps, services, and data when working either on-premise or remotely. Risk limitation due to diversity and exponential growth of devices will also be essential. Smart, cost-effective solutions for managing access to content will become imperative as (among others) governments further strengthen enforcement of regulatory privacy, content, and security compliance (see NIS2 as a recent example, read our blog on NIS2, learn more about NIS2).

Visibility and control over networks are fundamental for efficient IT management, automation, and security, which explains why DDI (DNS-DHCP-IPAM), Sources-of-Truth, and Network Modeling have a key role to play in all of these areas, based on their unique capability to offer ubiquity and harmonization of the data associated.

Here are our top 5 predictions for 2023 in the areas of Network Automation, Security, Management, Cloud, and Operations:

1) Digital Immunization Becomes the Norm for Risk Management

The Digital Immune System combines multiple software engineering strategies to protect against risk. It delivers a resilient system that can mitigate operational and security-based risks. More than 75% of teams that are responsible for digital products and strategies are now also responsible for revenue generation. It is expected this will continue to grow in the coming years. Adopting these new practices and approaches will help teams to deliver high business value and customer satisfaction, including mitigating risk.

Analysts predict that by 2025, system/services downtime will be reduced by 80% for organizations that invest in and create digital immunity strategy, which in return will effectuate in less costs and higher revenues. We predict this will be at the forefront of decision-making in 2023 around policy-based networking, network automation (including extreme design and testing), and operations, as it will provide an (almost) risk-free way of deploying networks to move forward faster.

EfficientIP solutions come with open and secure APIs to fit into the network automation part, including object management to pre-provision and test deployments more securely, safely, and accurately.

2) Further and Wider Adaptation of the Composite Enterprise

Composable Enterprises will use a controlled way of exchanging digital data and service utilizing APIs, to make the way they put together their offerings modular. This means they will break down components into smaller services, called microservices, based on particular business functions. The focus will be on creating workflows for specific business purposes to integrate across the complete technology stack. This is key to being able to do any automation to drive value across the business successfully.

Recent research revealed that the business demand for automation has increased for more than 90% of enterprises over the past two years and continues to grow. This is driven by the continuous need for automation across all parts of enterprises to decrease complexity and increase production in general. Additionally, 80% of enterprises will invest in automation within the next 2 years, with a more strategic, process-driven approach to enable composability. We think this will affect business more directly in terms of cost, revenue, and business stature in 2023 and beyond.

EfficientIP solutions provide Network Services that microservices need to operate and become accessible. With their open and secure APIs, they also fit seamlessly into automating the deployment on networks.

3) Rise of CloudOps

CloudOps is an Operations Practice to manage the deployment, delivery, optimization, and performance of workloads running in a cloud environment. To provide more context: CloudOps, for “Cloud Operations,” emerged as enterprises increasingly move app development and their workloads to the cloud. Those cloud outlays are becoming more and more complex, thus increasing the demand for CloudOps. The CloudOps framework will be further used to optimize cloud operations and take existing and new investments in the cloud to the next stage.

Enterprises are looking to level up their cloud strategy and are using this emerging framework to optimize performance and cost control of doing business in the cloud. Furthermore, multi-cloud’s added complexity and diversity drive the requirement of having specialized teams to manage operational excellence by harmonizing and providing ubiquity among cloud usage and adaptation to the company. This prompts growth, cost control, and risk management and will be taken even more seriously in 2023 to keep control of risk and costs.

EfficientIP solutions provide Network Object Management, Cloud Discovery, and Reconciliation as tools for CloudOps to provide harmonized insight, cost control, and a standardized way of managing multi-cloud.

4) Data-Driven Monitoring/Observability Intelligence Will Move to the Next Level

Modern companies need to monitor data across many tools and applications, but few have the visibility necessary to see how those tools and applications connect. Data observability can help companies understand, monitor, and manage their data across the full technology stack. As networks nowadays continue to grow and become more complex, there will be an increased demand for data operations, especially the observability to mitigate and eliminate risk, as well as guarantee high-quality data and compliance.

The data that is generated and available, and perhaps already used, by these complex networking ecosystems, can be utilized to drive automation and automated decision-making Over the next year we will see more companies using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to digest data, detect patterns, forecast, and in some cases even predict operational needs. This makes autonomous networks possible. That said, the need is now, and relying on data for decision making, while also ensuring it is of high quality, is a frontrunner of many automation efforts that will move to the next level in 2023.

EfficentIP Solutions provide Network Services that generate high-grade data and intelligence on usage, behavior, and health of any device or end-user in the Network, which can be used to effectuate Autonomous Networks and improve security.

5) Start of Wireless-Only Networks (Office Everywhere)

With “5G Slicing” becoming reality and available, we think that independent and/or virtualized networking will be more and more adopted in the coming year(s). This will become increasingly important as organizations extend their networks beyond the borders of their providers. These networks must be treated like any other part of an organization. Wireless-Only networks will also become a reality in that sense, where organizations start to “operate” and “recognize” the whole network ecosystem including the components provided by third parties.

This will make policy-based networking possible beyond the borders of traditional company networks, which is especially important for remote/hybrid or office-everywhere workforces, production plants, as well as special tech need areas (driverless cars, medical tech, etc). Organizations need their networks to guarantee the quality of service, availability, security, and compliance.

In 2023, organizations are going to be able to “cut out the middleman” and gain more control over logistics, real estate, costs, and risks. They will be able to roll out policy across the entire network and provide access anywhere on the planet to meet the demands of remote working. This will also result in organizations implementing more network-level automation to deal with both management and security.

EfficientIP Solutions already provide a great portfolio to manage networks, clouds, and the like (see the other four predictions), and this all applies to Wireless-Only networks as well. The key here is security, flexibility and adaptability, which are standard parts of all our solution offerings.