Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Australia has released the latest instalment of its trends series, TCS Tech Pulse, exploring the future of cybersecurity with insights from thought leaders about how businesses can protect themselves.

In 2023, the Australian government launched a blueprint to protect the country from a rising number of cyberattacks, but businesses need to also look at their own infrastructure to understand how they can prevent and protect themselves from security threats.

To ensure businesses are empowered with the right technology and knowledge, the next edition of TCS Tech Pulse: Cybersecurity has been delivered by TCS ANZ head of cybersecurity, Murali Natakam.

Five key highlights

  1. AI a double-edged sword: Viewing the year’s top technology trend as both a security threat and a security solution.
  2. A quantum leap in cryptography: Understanding new technology to support in cyber protection.
  3. Digital twins — an attacker’s entry point into the metaverse: Diving into the advantages and risks of new technology.
  4. The future is zero trust: Creating a new way of thinking about security across businesses.
  5. Connected devices a prime target in the age of 5G: Creating awareness around business weak spots.

What does this mean for the retail industry?

  • Digital twins: Assisting retailers in managing energy consumption, enabling predictive maintenance, and proactively identifying potential issues to mitigate the risk of disruptions.
  • Customer service: Enabling more personalised customer journeys to simulate customer buying behaviour and help generate predictions and push more data-driven decision-making.
  • Security partners: Retailers should collaborate with security partners to navigate these challenges and implement robust cybersecurity controls.
  • Mitigating cyber security risks: By also serving as virtual replicas of physical assets, processes, or systems, digital twins have the potential to widen a company’s attack surface if robust cybersecurity measures are not in place. Digital twins do in fact also offer a silver lining by enhancing cybersecurity. They can enable organisations to analyse and secure cyber-physical systems with minimal disruption to critical processes and infrastructure.