Technology is evolving at a breakneck pace and in 10 years’ time the world will probably be a very different place than it is today.
But sometimes, it's interesting to look a bit further ahead. In this piece, I’ll take a look at how the way we think about and implement security and privacy might have evolved as we hit the halfway point of the next decade. As technologies like gene editing and brain-computer interfacing become commonplace, questions emerge about protecting the highly personal data contained in our DNA itself. Within ten years, we could even find ourselves needing to protect our innermost thoughts against entities seeking to hijack them for their own ends. This could be selling our genetic data for unethical research purposes. Or even reading our minds in order to work out how to manipulate and control us .
As our reliance on interconnected networks continues to grow, so too does the potential damage that can be done. Critical infrastructure and financial systems will be targeted and disrupted with rising frequency. On a societal level, increasingly sophisticated deepfake technology makes it harder to differentiate fact from fiction, accelerating the spread of propaganda and disinformation and potentially undermining democratic processes as well as trust in national institutions.