I haven’t thought about New Year’s resolutions for many years. I prefer thinking on ways to support and improve habits that are ongoing life choices. For instance, I’m always trying to keep a lot of focus on mind and body health through exercise, healthy eating, and getting good rest. Another one is a desire to always be learning. The subjects I want to learn about fall into three simple categories: things that can make me better at my job as a cybersecurity analyst, things that support mind and body health, and things that fascinate me, capture my imagination.
Since 2023 is about to exit stage right, I’ll join in on the fun theme of sharing some of my hopes for the new year. Most of these things that I hope to see happen and hope to do fit right in to the always be learning theme - so here we go. I hope:
AI in the workplace will stay almost entirely in “copilot” mode - augmenting our knowledge and skills, taking on more basic tasks for us, making us more efficient and allowing us to focus our efforts on the more interesting and challenging elements of our work. I’ve seen many of the leading thinkers and creators in the AI space say they believe we’ll be in copilot mode for something like the next 5 years at least - so this doesn’t feel like a unicorn level hope.
Smaller, open-source AI models will gain ground and achieve great success in 2024, trending against concentration of market share and dominance for just a handful of Big Tech companies.
AI tools continue to improve on the desktop, browsers, and as mobile apps. In particular, as I use both these phones, I look forward to more promised GenAI apps (like the horribly named Assistant with Bard) on the Pixel 8 Pro, and maybe some new GenAI apps on the expected Nothing Phone 3 next year.
My PKM (personal knowledge management) skills will improve. I have two goals in this area: to create a new evergreen/atomic note every day, and to either get better at the Zettelkasten method or drop it so I’m not distracted by it.
To spend a lot more time reading and a lot less time going down far too many YouTube rabbit holes.
*Stolen from Yaro on Ai and Tech Trends: Ethical AI: The ethical implications of AI are gaining prominence. There's an increasing focus on developing AI systems that are transparent, fair, and accountable, with a significant emphasis on AI ethics education and standards, and… AI-Empowered Education: AI will play a crucial role in personalizing and revolutionizing educational approaches and methodologies.
To continue discovering great learning resources - people, books, podcasts, and web publications. By the way, I’m going to do a post on some of my favorite resources some time early next year.
Reminder: Cyber Starters Live Q&A Meeting - 2
Is next Saturday, here are the details:
Saturday January 6 (2024!) , 2:00pm US Central Time
Google Meet joining info
Video call link: meet.google.com/ybw-kaci-aai
This session, and any future Q&A sessions will cover questions on topics like:
How to build a home lab for trying out attack and defense methods
Details of the different roles and teams in the cybersecurity field
Interviews for cyber roles, and how the interview process typically works
Which are the most useful cybersecurity certifications to look at getting
Networking
And anything else that’s on your mind and relevant
For this January 6 session I’ll add:
Your thoughts / predictions on 2024 cybersecurity trends and headlines
2024 cybersecurity wish lists
And a few that I should have included in the first session, suggested by a former student on the MITxPro Professional Certificate in Cybersecurity course:
How does one get a job in Cybersecurity with no experience?
Or big picture-if you are on a Cyber Team-how do you convince the higher ups that you have done a great job bc you have prevented major breaches?
CEOs can see if a breach costs them money, but they can't easily figure out how much they have "saved" bc you have done a great job?
I hope all of you enjoy the New Year’s holiday and get off to a great start in 2024.
As usual, nicely done, Patrick!
One prediction for the future is that AI graphics tools will be increasingly viewed as a threat to graphics and photographic artists. It wouldn't surprise me to see more hostile commentary in the media on this front.
Wishing you and your fans a Happy New Year!
Ernie