How corporations will defend themselves against cyber attacks in 2017

It seems like every other day a new cyber attack makes international headlines. But cybersecurity isn’t just a concern for major government organizations trying to repel foreign actors. Corporate espionage through cyber attacks also poses an enormous threat for the world’s biggest companies.

It’s because of that threat that CA Technologies (CA) CEO Mike Gregoire believes corporate IT security budgets will be virtually unlimited in 2017. Gregoire made his observation during an interview with Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“You’re going to see spending for sure in security,” Gregoire said, adding that corporations will move toward using artificial intelligence and data analytics to defend their users and customers.

To ensure that companies aren’t simply throwing money at their cybersecurity issues, Gregoire says every organization needs to have a strategy.

“We do have some help,” he explained. “There is the NIST [National Institute of Standards and Technology] framework. I would recommend every CEO and board of directors make sure they understand what that framework looks like.”

Gregoire said he has CA Technologies’ experts rank how vulnerable the company is with regards to the NIST framework, asks what tools are being used to keep the organization secure and discusses the quality of the vendors using those tools.

But 2017 won’t just be about cybersecurity. Gregoire said he believes the new year, like 2016, will continue to see a large number of mergers and acquisitions in the software and software distribution industry. IPOs, on the other hand, will only increase slightly, he predicted.

“You know, the last two years have been pretty dim with respect to IPOs,” Gregoire said. “I think the IPO market will rebound a little bit in this coming year, but the barrier to entry into an IPO is changing.”

Those barriers, Gregoire explained, include benchmarks like consistent growth of 30% to 40%, a path to profitability that investors can easily see and, perhaps most important of all, a second product that shows a company can innovate.

“Look at companies like Uber,” Gregoire said. “Uber is already starting to morph outside of their main economic engine, because they understand that they have a platform.

“And in order to monetize the investment they made in that platform they have to make it more valuable. To make it more valuable, you have to add more products and services.”

More of Yahoo Finance’s Davos 2017 coverage:

• America’s growth outlook depends on which President Trump we get

• Why ‘independent America’ is the No.1 geopolitical threat of 2017

• Princeton president: I hope Congress doesn’t tax our endowment

• Trump should expect no honeymoon and plenty of impatience: EY CEO

Email Daniel at dhowley@yahoo-inc.com; follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.