But, thanks to the hundreds of tech experts that we’ve polled for the most likely trends of 2021, we can deliver a huge range of educated predictions about how the tech industry will evolve in the new year. Unsurprisingly, expected advances in AI and financial technology (fintech) were common responses. Both types of tech are fast-growing, and their impacts will be felt across a gamut of industries. But, the experts dug into far more for our wide-ranging 2021 round of fortune-telling. Due for a great year in 2021 are solar tech, speech tech, and electric vehicles. Due for a hectic one? Cybersecurity. Here are our 12 takeaways on everything from the death of the corporate headquarters to the rise of the billion-dollar ransomware heist. But others agree, and some highlight other types of ecommerce-adjacent tech that may crop up in 2021. One big ecommerce growing pain to expect? Website accessibility. “I predict more retailers will adopt strategies and solutions to make their digital content accessible to their underrepresented customers,” says David Moradi, CEO at AudioEye. If an ecommerce platform doesn’t keep those who are blind, hard of hearing, epileptic or dyslexic at the top of their mind during every step of development, they’re asking for legal action. Websites will also have to up their security and their website speed, Peteva adds: “In order for most things to happen online, live-streaming and website servers will need to continue to become faster and faster, to accommodate a high-amount of traffic.” A bolstered consumer interest on ecommerce will be a problem for anyone who doesn’t boost security, with Macy’s $195,000 data breach settlement from last June serving as a cautionary tale. See our guide to the best ecommerce website builders
AI Becomes Human
Mark Gazit, CEO of ThetaRay, holds that AI is headed towards a new generation, one that makes it more human then ever, with the equivalent of common sense or gut feelings: Artificial Intuition, the ability to make accurate deductions from partial information. If that sounds too science fictional for you, maybe Deon Nicholas, the founder of Forethought, can help break it down. He also thinks the direction of AI development will make a big change, and calls the next paradigm shift in AI “Natural Language Understanding” (NLU). This branch of AI research enables direct human-computer interaction by designing software to process full sentences. It’ll replace “computer vision,” the type of AI that has dominated all of tech since about 2014, and brought us the self-driving car. We’re no experts, but we do know one thing; self-driving cars aren’t doing that great despite years of hype, and responding by restarting AI from scratch is at least a promising move. And this time, let’s all try to make the new AI less biased against women and minorities. But an original survey out from payroll and HR startup OnPay indicates that the change will hold. Their recent survey found that 65% of small businesses say they plan to support a form of work from home option after the pandemic end — a number up 21% from the start of 2020. For tech companies, this might mean a shift towards a more nimble, remote-friendly IT team. Business leaders will definitely be making some tough return-to-work choices in the near future. Organizations that make the shift to a hybrid work model on a cultural level (not just within their IT team) will be best positioned to succeed in 2021, and will offer more flexibility to their employees in the process. With a hybrid work environment comes the need to invest in systems that support employees’ home-based productivity — Check out Tech.co’s guide to the top recommended remote desktop software over here.
…Which Will Kill the Corporate Headquarters
Daniel Chait, CEO and Co-founder of Greenhouse Software, notes one aspect of the remote work shift: Companies have already put in the effort to change their company cultures by changing schedules, finding new meeting formats, and purchasing new remote-friendly tools. They’ve also began to “realize the savings of not having physical offices.” Vivian Welsh, chief people officer at Veeva Systems, builds out the prediction further: In other words, the big shift in remote work will crown new winners and new losers. In the former category is the idea of a physical homebase. So who wins?
But, We’ll See a Remote-Work-Powered Speech Tech Boom
Since most companies will be continuing remote work through 2021, there will be a renaissance in speech tech, the catch-all term for technology that revolves around the spoken word, from auto-transcription to speech recognition APIs to audio-first communication platforms. Stephenson predicts a growing number of enterprises will allocate greater budgets towards voice-enabled agent and customer facing experiences. As the speech tech space gets heartier, software providers will start competing in order to get the last word (pun intended, I’m so sorry). Kowsik Guruswamy, CTO at Menlo Security, notes that we saw an uptick in social engineering and impersonation attacks soon after lockdowns began. The growing ease with which bad actors can trick and hack a growing remote workforce is a recipe for a brand-new crop of hackers. After all, 2021’s graduating class will be entering a workforce in which entry level jobs are frozen, and they’ll need to put food on the table, too. Ironically, job-seekers are a group vulnerable to attacks too, says Jon Perez, Director of Emerging Threats & Detection Research at IronNet, since malicious actors always target the most vulnerable groups and demographics. The one other potential vector for phishing attacks is the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. Finally, a tip of the hat to Thom Langford, a Gigaom analyst who offered what feels like the best bet out of all the predictions in this article: “Nothing really changes; phishing will still be the number one cause of cybercrime as humans remain the number one vulnerability that criminals attack.” See our guide to the best antivirus software for business
The US Government Further Abandons Victims of Identity Theft
The U.S. government has already cut resources that once flowed to the victims of financial and identity crime, dropping its total crime victim services from $3.7 billion in 2018 to $1.9 billion today, and even the majority of those funds in prosecutors offices and police departments. The Indentity Theft Resource Center believes that trend will continue across the next 12 months. That’s not great news when paired with our prediction about the surge in phishing attacks. But the reign of 2021 cybercrime could get even worse.
Ransomware Attacks will Accelerate
Bad news for every CISO hoping their 2021 will go smoothly, because they can expect a sharp rise in ransomware attacks, both from ransomware-as-a-service hackers and from nation states. This prediction comes from Michael Rezek, VP of cybersecurity strategy at network performance analytics company Accedian (although he was echoed by many other expert respondents this year). What’s the solution? Looking critically at network detection & response solutions (NDR), as well as endpoint security approaches. Smaller companies won’t have the resources, so they should stick with managed security services such as managed defense and response. Employees will need to be educated on the risks, and even simple cybersecurity practices like updating passwords can help. Need better password practices? Check out Tech.co’s top recommended password managers. Still, companies should figure out now how to deal with a potential ransomware attack, understanding that the criminal teams tend to move laterally through an organization when they attack, looking for more data to heist. Vanessa Pegueros, Chief Trust and Security Officer at OneLogin, notes that prime targets include businesses, schools, healthcare facilities and the government. Total ransomware damages rose from $11.5B to $20B across 2020, with 56% of organizations falling victim, and the attacks will only keep growing in the new year.
Oh, and the Business World will Change Permanently
Remote work is just one of the permanent changes the business world will see due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is expected to last well into 2021. Wizeline‘s Bismarck Lepe believes that global economies will be all right, but calls out three major industries that will never be their old selves again: commercial real estate, business travel and traditional retail. But it’s not all bad news: “Industries like leisure travel, ecommerce, residential real estate and communication, on the other hand, will thrive in the wake of a vaccine, particularly as the broad shift to ‘work from anywhere’ has become the new paradigm.” But enough about business. How’s the delicate climate of our only habitable planet doing? One tidbit of evidence includes the rise of the electric vehicle, which is poised to go mainstream in 2021, with new electric trucks and SUVs out from GM and Ford. Piva Capital investor Maria Buitron also points out the push to decarbonize industrial sectors including cement and concrete, steel, aluminium, and chemicals. There’s still a chance this is more big-tech corporate greenwashing, however, which I why I’m so hesitant to call this good news: I’ve been burned before.
2020 Wasn’t 5G’s Breakout Year — and 2021 Won’t be, Either
5G has been ‘almost here’ for so long that even our 2020 tech trend prediction article warned that 5G wasn’t arriving as fast as we’d hoped. For 2021, the prognosis is much the same, according to Bismarck Lepe, founder and CEO at Wizeline. But this upcoming year may well mark an evolution for 5G, even if it’s decidedly not a revolution. In another sign of 5G’s slow-motion takeover, we’ll see a big rise in 5G trial initiatives by enterprises across 2021, says EdgeQ CEO Vinay Ravuri, particularly in manufacturing, energy and surveillance, “to enable mission-critical applications that require low latency.” Consumer headsets might be the most visible evidence of 5G’s growth to the average person, but enterprise companies will increasingly dip their toes into the technology. Plus, a new study coming out in 2021 shows the value of solar is “higher than the net metering rate throughout the US. This means it benefits everyone the more solar is distributed on the grid.” A new, more energy-efficient solar cells, called a “black silicon” cell, can absorb even more solar energy and is poised to further tip the industry towards success. The solar industry already employs five times more workers than the coal industry, and 2021 looks like a great year for solar.
