AI security, end-point protection and personalisation among key IT trends this year: ManageEngine

AI (artificial intelligence) security, hyper automation and end-point protection are some of the significant trends that will impact the IT industry, according to  ManageEngine, the IT management division of Chennai-based Zoho Corporation.

The IT management and service operations provider, which listed six industry trends that will have a significant role to play in IT for 2020, said that employees shouldering the responsibility of adhering to privacy laws, IT companies’ turn towards personalisation of enterprise solution offerings and increased spending in cloud computing would be important trends this year. 

“IT departments will see privacy, security and cost management strategies, along with AI and ML (machine learning), play pivotal roles,” Rajesh Ganesan, vice president at ManageEngine, said. 

A statement by the company said there would be greater value placed on the deployment of ‘explainable’ AI technologies -- software deployments in which the AI system gives reasons for its actions and decisions for IT teams to correct the AI systems in real time.

“AI training data and ML models must be protected by techniques like homomorphic encryption, which performs complex mathematical operations on encrypted information without decrypting it first,” the release said. 

ManageEngine also warned against concept drift, i.e. a problem where the statistical data of the target variable changes over time. Such a scenario would make the AI model irrelevant and cause the system to malfunction. 

The adoption of AI/ML technologies, combined with autonomous engineering, will take hyper automation to the next level. This will be backed by robotic and cognitive process automation and will be utilised to make dynamic and complex business processes. This includes fully-automated insurance claims, loan processing and warehouse dispatch.

In terms of data protection, ManageEngine pointed towards employees bearing some responsibility in complying with the latest data protection law that was derived from European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. Organisations will also utilise the vast data sets and insights derived through AI to provide tailored customer experiences, which will allow companies to respond to unique needs to each customer, it said. 

The company cautioned against mobile applications being the source of the next large-scale enterprise security breach, especially due to the influx of non-traditional workers and usage of remote devices.

Finally, after spending on the cloud for years, enterprises will now look to optimise their costs towards SaaS (software-as-a-service).  

“While the cloud, especially SaaS, has enabled the democratisation of technology across all business functions, it has also resulted in organisations spending more than needed,” said ManageEngine.  

However the company stated that solutions that give better control and visibility to business leaders are on the anvil.