The new year past a few months, and followed by the Union Budget 2020. There are some interesting recommendations made in the Budget. The leading ones were around artificial intelligence (AI), data centers and cyber security.

According to the Budget, due to the growth of technologies like analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and bioinformatics, the number of people in the productive age group at its highest. The Budget further outlined the following:

* Artificial intelligence and machine learning will be used in the healthcare sector.

* Data is the new oil. Policy to enable private sector to build data centre parks throughout the country will be rolled out soon. All institutions at ground level like Anganwadi, Gram Panchayat and police stations will be provided digital connectivity.

We asked the industry what they thought of the three verticals. Here are some responses.

Security

Rajesh Maurya, Regional Vice President, India and SAARC, Fortinet

It is quite clear that cybersecurity and networking are coming together. You can no longer have one without the other. Networks reach out and touch almost everything, as anything you can think of is becoming “internet connected.” The network doubles as a delivery method for convenience – which is good, and malware – which is bad, so it needs to have security embedded.

Billions of new devices will create new edge networks and platforms, many of them ad hoc and temporary, enabling new immersive technologies such as VR and AR-based communications, rich media, collaborative experiences, and interactive tools that tie multiple services together in new technology areas. This will require the convergence of networking and security to ensure the integrity of data and devices.

Because of the new edge platforms security will need to refocus on prevention, which is far more difficult and processor-intensive. High-performance transactions will require immediate decision-making, security will not only need to be available on new edge-based IoT and networking devices but will also need AI  to be built into the next generation of security solutions to meet new performance demands and decision-making demands.

To meet and secure the new demands of today’s dynamic and demanding networking environment, organizations need a new generation of security that is tightly integrated with the network, giving rise to the new concept of security-driven networking.

Security-driven networking is how modern security teams can solvethe problem of having to grow their networks in a dynamic environment without compromising on security. In fact, letting security drive your approach to networking is really the only way to ensure that, going forward, any new network environment or solution won’t pose serious risks to the company’s digital estate.

Security-first strategies, such as security-driven networking, are where security is heading in the next generation. This is how we can begin to embrace smart cities, automated transportation, and 5G networks while keeping them all safe from the next generation of cyber criminals.

New, secure SD-WAN solutions are the perfect place for security-driven networking to begin. Deep integration between connectivity and security allow for the seamless and straightforward deployment of a complete solution, while networking and security functions can be managed simultaneously using a single pane of glass management system, reducing overhead, increasing performance and protection, and paving the way for the next generation of security.

Rajnish Gupta, Regional Director, India, RSA Security

Fueled by technological innovation and digital transformation, our world is evolving and changing more quickly than ever. In 2019, with more than four billion records breached, we learnt that regardless of size or sector, every organization is a target of a possible cyberattack.

Year 2020, will witness the rise of cyber-savvy boards with forward thinking businesses appointing board members with experience in risk management and information security. We will also see investors prioritizing the need for clear digital risk management strategies.

The shortage of cyber security skills is a big struggle even with the best tools, processes and budgetsavailable with organisations. This year, technology will help businesses close the skills gap as they will look to reduce dependency on talent via security orchestration and automation software, risk-based prioritization, and comprehensive threat analytics. Artificial intelligence (AI) will evolve to a point where recommendations based on its analysis can be more readily understood—even by those without technical skills.

Despite a growing list of options, there is still no one-size-fits-all solution for identity and access management. Better buyer support and more decision-making guides will help businesses looking to strike a balance between security and user experience.

K7 Computing

The cyberthreat landscape evolves rapidly and continuously, making it difficult to peer into a crystal ball to anticipate the future. Many types of attacks could emerge, and threats could eventually materialise. Some malware, however, have reached critical mass and are inevitable – if you think you’re not at risk, you’re wrong. K7 Security summarises the most prominent, and dangerous, cyber-attacks you are likely to encounter in 2020.

Data centers

Manish Israni, Head of IT Operations and CIO at Yotta Infrastructure

2020 may prove to be a transforming year for the data center industry with newer and bigger players entering the market. More companies will invest in colocation data centers to avoid blocking a chunk of resources and receive technologically advanced services. Data center providers will continue to innovate and offer high-quality facilities to customers at competitive pricing.

Cloud associated markets will continue to grow at a high pace.Hybrid cloud will dominate in the coming years. With data generation and processing of the same locally, Hyperscale and Edge data centers will gain importance. In terms of data center infrastructure, IoT will define architecture towards an efficient data center. Software-defined data centers (SDDC) and network virtualisation will gain popularity as they offer unlimited scalability, better efficiency at a lower cost and reliable and strong network. Other environmental trends like water conservation and the use of green energy in data centers will also see the light in 2020.

Rob Johnson, CEO, Vertiv

A new equilibrium is emerging in the data center space as the industry wrestles with capacity challenges and advanced applications that are forcing significant changes to data centers of all shapes and sizes.

At the same time, speed of deployment is increasingly becoming a tipping point in technology decisions and will likely shape investment and innovation in the space as we head into 2020. This will manifest itself in many ways, but the message to data center equipment providers is clear: The status quo is not acceptable.

Artificial intelligence

Hareesha Pattaje, MD and Country Head, India, Synechron

The last couple of years have seen AI being deployed across organizations, along with IoT and blockchain. As per Harvard Business Review, AI is expected to add $13 trillion to the global economy over the next ten years. According to Synechron, for banks being impacted by London Interbank Offer Rate (LIBOR), advancements in Natural Language Processing (NLP) will help digitize LIBOR-sensitive contracts and re-calculate the interbank lending rates. We will witness banks deploying AI to identify potential cyber-attacks by detecting unusual patterns and anomalies in operations.

Further, the industry will leverage different aspects of AI, namely, NLP, chatbots, robotic process automation (RPA), cognitive machine Learning, data science and robo-advisor, to reduce their operating costs, streamline backend processes and implement analytics efficiently, in order to produce better forecasts.

Synechron also foresees a rise in usage and development of multi-model machine learning systems and their model lifecycle management tools/ platforms. Moreover, with data being generated at a high rate, insight is becoming the new asset for businesses. We believe that model-free, policy-based generalized learning from huge corpora of data that changes frequently due to regulatory controls, is gaining momentum.

NLP and optical character recognition (OCR) will also be advantageous to employ total automation of document management processes with the RPA tools for process automation, reducing the need of human intervention for recurring tasks. 2020 will, thus, see banks exploit AI to automate repetitive and labour-intensive tasks such as data entry, credit risk assessment and responding to customer queries.

AI will further focus on deep learning, enabling the system to learn from its own method of computing with the knowledge graphs, hence, help in fraud detection, market forecasting, creating unique customer experience or even identifying advantageous marketing opportunities.