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Security is a top most concern for all and year 2014 considered to be an exhausting year for cyber defenders. Breach of data, increasing cyber criminal activities, the future of information security goes beyond the narrative of change cloud, mobile, hackers, et cetera. Gartner points out the four potential scenarios which are dreadful. The report by Gartner highlighted five-year security and risk scenario.
The report highlights that Cloud, mobile, social, big data and other sources plays a vital role in transforming the practice of information security and IT risk management between 2014 and 2019. There can be many factors. Though the enterprise security is improving yet there is more mobile devices out at the edge so the value at the edge is increasing and the tools for compromising end user devices continue to become more automated.
Gartner highlighted that one of the most powerful trends will be about how attacks are targeted, at the enterprise or the individual. The other trend will be how the response is coordinated.
According to the Global Industry Analyst report the information security market will exceed to $125 billion by 2015. This is because the demand for security products and services will be fuelled by increasing frequency and intensity of cyber attacks against enterprises, individuals, government institutions etc.
New technologies a risk
With new technologies coming in, the threat for security breach is cause of concern. To look into the demands of companies to give them one single solution to address the overall technology challenges is not practically feasible. The new emerging technology of BYOD needs to be looked at from different dimensions like Data Loss Prevention, Network access Control, Authentication system, internal intrusion prevention systems, internal firewalls, securing Wi-Fi etc. This demands that companies relook at the security architecture and rebuild it to fit BYOD needs.
Pradeep Swamy, Director, Saheels Management Solutions says, “We are a solution providing company looking at data security. We ensure data should be intact and employees should not temper with the data of the company. New technologies like BYOD, Cloud migration may be good for the companies but they have to ensure that a good software is required to take a regular back up while having proper solutions at place.”
L. Ashok, Director, Futurenet technologies believes that BYOD is convenient to use for the companies but there has to be somebody to ensure information security should be looked at holistically. “People are looking at alternative technologies. They are looking at cloud and Hybrid cloud is one technology that is catching up fast among the organisations. These new technologies are good for businesses only when deployment of solution is taken care of. The new technologies have helped the business to grow and it is going to be from one business to another business.”
Inderpal Singh, CEO, Aman Technologies deals in BYOD solutions and shares, “It is a very beneficial technology for the businesses to grow. The useage of BYOD has increased over the period and is also increasing in the government sector. We give managed solutions in this space. However convincing the customers for the adoption of BYOD solutions is difficult as they are not ready to pay for solutions. Nevertheless, we are conducting a customer awareness program that is helping in educating the customer about the need for solutions in BYOD.”
The volume of private information being shared has increased significantly particularly driven by social networking and this is likely to continue. Also the volume and value of transactions through electronic channels is expected to rise. These trends suggest that cyber criminals will be investing further resources in developing more sophisticated attacks.
Regulation and standards will be the important drivers of information security over the next decade, but will need to keep pace and evolve as technology and its uses develop. There is increasing pressure towards regulation in information security with privacy and content being the supreme.
Challenges
The rapidly changing technology landscape and evolving threats require organisations to rethink about security strategy. There have been many challenges that are declining the productivity of the organisations against these thefts. Providing identity and establishing trust are two of the important challenges. As people spend more time online, identity becomes a greater challenge because fewer interactions will be face to face, a greater volume of private information is available online and new technologies will make it easier to impersonate individuals.
Ashok shares, “Also adopting new technologies in itself is a challenge as the decision taking time for adopting the security solutions with new technologies is prolonging as the customer has to shell extra money. But we are trying to educate the customer about the new technology adoption and its solutions and how they should embrace this technology.”
E-commerce requirement is another challenge. The internet has created an important channel for conducting business. The channel provides many new ways for businesses to offer products and services to customers. E-commerce has become a buzz word and the services are quite appealing to consumers who do not want to spend time in stores. But this channel has the associated risks involved.
DDos attacks (Distributed Denial of Service) the higher risk of business impacting threats with the shift from computer based attacks, generating large number of lower bandwidth events to virtual servers or cloud based attacks.
Cloud migration is another possible challenge as the companies move critical data into the cloud. The challenge is that cloud security processes and solutions are still being developed. With innovation and planning cloud services could reduce business risks by providing greater flexibility, resiliency and security.
Internet is one of the top most challenges to security of a professional as they perceive the notion that internet is a secure critical infrastructure. The internet is an open connection of diverse networks. It is essential for the organisations to put policies that distinguish platform and security levels based on business criticality.
Threats
Today cyber threats have become more complex. According to Trend Micro’s annual threat round up report, ‘cashing in on digital information’, security breaches, cyber criminal, and organised attacks made it impossible to keep personal and financial data private. Here are few threats that will prevail in the year
- Financial Threats: As online banking malware that directly target victims’ finances intensified globally this year, prolific ransomware increased and evolved into Cryptolocker throughout the year.
- Mobile Threats: There was a sizable increase in both volume and sophistication of mobile threats, as PC-based threats transitioned to mobile platforms. By the end of 2013, we saw a total of 1.4 million malicious and high-risk Android apps being identified. And Apple users are not immune. 2013 saw an increase in phishing attacks specifically targeting Apple users as criminals recognize the potential revenue from this install base.
- Personal Privacy: Through social networking and “personal cloud” accounts, personal privacy became a recurring issue. Aggressive phishing attacks riding on the release of popular products such as PS4 and Xbox One emerged to compromise personal information.
- Infrastructure Attacks: High-profile incidents of infrastructure being targeted by cyber-attacks became a reality in South Korea, demonstrating how critical operations can be impacted on a broad scale.
- Unsupported Software: 2013 saw increased awareness regarding unsupported versions of Java and Windows XP, which will present widespread security challenges as patches and upgrades cease when support for XP ends April 2014.
Solutions
Today cyber threats are more complex and sophisticated than ever before. They pose greater volume of risk to businesses that have far reaching impact and implications that may not realised currently. So a need for best cyber expert to protect and defend the business is required. The intelligent information security solutions enable enterprises to mitigate data loss, protect technical data from unauthorized use, manage various types of endpoint software and restrict physical access to crucial data and information.
Desktop Virtualization provides a secure by design solution to simplify security, protect intellectual property, ensure data privacy, meet compliance and manage risk while promoting business productivity and growth. With desktop virtualization, windows applications, data and desktops are centralized and secured in the datacenter rather than distributed across hundreds of endpoints and delivered on-demand with full control and visibility.
To combat the security threats adopt a least privilege security posture that gives each employee the least privilege necessary to accomplish required tasks and ensure that unnecessary access rights are revoked whenever an employee changes roles. Some of the most common implementation options-assigning appropriate access directly to users based on well-defined roles, limiting access to administrator and/or root accounts- making sure that the passwords to these accounts are not shared, changed frequently, and there are controls in place to limit and track their use.
