Gartner's SRM Vision: Tackling Cyber Security Challenges

Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit took place earlier this week in Sydney, Australia, where the research company's analysts shared their findings on the cyber security industry and the trends that lay ahead this year.

In the main, these trends appear to be influenced by generative AI (GenAI) evolution, digital decentralizing, supply chain interdependencies, regulatory change, endemic talent shortages and a constantly evolving threat landscape.

Challenges and opportunities

Speaking at the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit, Alex Michaels, Senior Principal Analyst at Gartner, said, “Security and risk management (SRM) pioneers face a mix of challenges and opportunities this year, with a goal to enable transformation and embed resilience."

"Their efforts in achieving both are crucial to support their organization’s aspirations to not only innovate, but ensure their innovations are secure and sustainable in a fast-changing digital world.”

Gartner's six trends

According to Gartner, the following six trends will have broad impact across these areas:

Trend 1: Gen AI driving data security programmes

Rise of Gen AI is transforming data security agendas, shifting focus to protect formless data

Most security efforts and financial resources are traditionally focused on protecting structured data such as databases. However, the rise of Gen AI is transforming data security programmes, shifting focus to protect unstructured data — text, images and videos.

“Many organizations have completely reoriented their investment strategies, which has significant implications for large language model (LLM) training, data deployment and inference processes,” said Michaels. “Ultimately, this shift underscores the changing priorities that pioneers must address as they communicate the impact of Gen AI on their programmes.”

Trend 2: Managing machine identities

Increasing adoption of Gen AI, cloud services, automation and Dev Ops practices, has led to the prolific use of machine accounts and credentials for physical devices and software workloads. If left uncontrolled and unmanaged, machine identities can significantly expand an organization's attack surface.

According to Gartner, SRM pioneers are under pressure to build a strategy to implement robust machine identity and access management (IAM) to protect against attacks, but it must be a coordinated enterprise-wide effort. A Gartner survey of 335 IAM pioneers globally, conducted between August and October 2024, found that IAM teams are only responsible for 44% of an organization’s machine identities.

Trend 3: Tactical AI

SRM pioneers are facing mixed results with their AI implementations, leading them to reprioritise

SRM pioneers are facing mixed results with their AI implementations, leading them to reprioritise their initiatives and focus on narrower use cases with direct measurable impacts. These more tactical implementations align AI practices and tools with existing metrics, fit them into existing initiatives, and enhance visibility of the real value of AI investments.

“SRM pioneers now have clear responsibilities to secure third-party AI consumption, protect enterprise AI applications and improve cyber security with AI,” said Michaels. “By focusing on more tactical, demonstrably beneficial improvements, they can minimize the risks for their cyber security programmes and can more easily demonstrate progress.”

Trend 4: Cyber security technology optimization

According to a Gartner survey of 162 large enterprises, conducted between August and October 2024, organizations use an average of 45 cyber security tools. With over 3,000 vendors in cyber security, SRM pioneers need to optimize their toolsets to build more efficient and effective security programmes.

Gartner recommends aiming for a balance that procurement, security architects, security engineers, and other stakeholders are satisfied with to maintain the right security posture. To achieve this, SRM pioneers should consolidate and validate core security controls and focus on architecture that enhances portability of data. Threat modeling and organizational technology drivers such as AI adoption can also be used to assess advanced needs.

Trend 5: Extending security behavior and culture program value

Effective SRM pioneers recognize the value these agendas bring to improve their cyber security posture

Security behavior and culture programmes (SBCPs) have reached an inflection point for most organizations. Effective SRM pioneers recognize the value these programmes bring to improve their cyber security posture. According to Gartner, one of the largest drivers of change in these programmes is Gen AI – enterprises combining the technology with an integrated platforms-based architecture in SBCPs will experience 40% fewer employee-driven cybersecurity incidents by 2026.

This trend is gaining traction due to increasing recognition that both good and bad human behavior are critical components of cybersecurity. As a result, cultural and behavior-focused activities have become a prominent approach to address cyber-risk comprehension and ownership at the human level. This reflects a strategic shift toward embedding security into the organizational culture.

Trend 6: Addressing cyber security burnout

SRM pioneer and security team burnout is a key concern for an industry already impacted by a systemic skills shortage, according to Gartner. This pervasive stress stems from relentless demands associated with securing highly complex organizations in constantly changing threat, regulatory and business environments, with limited authority, executive support and resources.

“Cyber security burnout and its organizational impact must be recognized and addressed to ensure cyber security program effectiveness,” said Michaels. “The most effective SRM pioneers are not only prioritizing their own stress management, they are investing in teamwide wellbeing initiatives that demonstrably improve personal resilience.”