IDC: Security Trends and Predictions for 2012

Yesterday I attended IDC’s conference call on 2012 predictions for the IT security industry.  The IDC Security Research team did a great job of laying out the important trends for IT security.

Security is an area that just keeps on becoming more and more important.  Unfortunately, the bad guys out there just keep finding ways to attack and disrupt.  The big trends today of social, mobile, cloud, and analytics are all putting more pressure on IT security professionals today to provide an infrastructure that can withstand almost any type of attack. 

The speakers on the 45 minute conference call were

• Christian A. Christiansen, Program Vice President, Security Products and Services, IDC
• John Grady, Senior Research Analyst, Security Products and Services, IDC
• Phil Hochmuth, Program Manager, Security Products, IDC
• Sally Hudson, Research Director, Security Products and Services, IDC
• Charles J. Kolodgy, Research Vice President, Security Products, IDC
• Chris Liebert, Senior Analyst, Security Services, IDC

Below you will find the IDC Security Predictions for 2012 in bold text along with my notes from the call:

1. Customer Expectations & Frustration Will Grow.  IDC has been hearing that IT leaders are having a hard time defining the risks, let alone trying to solve them.  This leads to miscommunication and misunderstanding between IT leaders, the execs, and the employees.  As a result of this miscommunication and misunderstanding, frustrations over expectations will increase.
2. Cloud Will Slowly Incorporate Identity, Privilege & Access.  IDC says many large enterprises are looking to implement hybrid and private clouds and these large enterprises are slowly building into their implementations identity, privilege & access.
3. Mobile Security Merges Mobile Device Management, SaaS, & Policy.  Security vendors are realizing that the combination of threats and risks associated with mobile is different and complex.  Correlating user to device, application, and data is becoming increasingly important. IDC also says the integration of standards will become increasingly important.
4. Social Networking Becomes More Hellish and Complicated.  IDC says social computing continues to change and evolve.  Focus on control and privacy aspects of social will increase.  As enterprises invest more and more to integrate social throughout all business processes their needs to be better tools to ensure that social not only increases employee productivity, but manages enterprise risk effectively.  IDC says watch for greater restrictions on employees tweeting and posting on behalf of the enterprise.
5. Big Data Comes to Security as Threat Intelligence Security Services.  IDC says Big Data combined with advanced analytics will be used to help enterprises reduce risks via predictive analytics.
6. Professional Services Drive Managed Security and SaaS.  IDC expects firms to roll out an increased number of professional services in order to drive   IDC says professional services engagements are leading to increased opportunities for managed security services and SaaS.   
7. Threat Ecosystem Changes from Channel to Direct Model.  IDC says bad guys are moving more towards a direct model of organization where they do everything themselves vs. relying on third parties to do their dirty work.
8. Freemium Changes Endpoint Markets for Consumer/SMB in China.  IDC says the freemium model, where businesses offer products and services for free and then try to lure customers into buying premium versions, has implications for security and risk management.
9. Weaponized Malware Takes Threats to a New Level.  Increasingly, the bad guys are using malware to do some really awful things.  IDC says this could be a new and very vicious trend that is not on the radar of many enterprises yet.
10. New “Normal” is Constant Attacks and Breaches.  IDC says enterprises of all sizes must brace themselves for constant flood of attacks from all types of sources.  These attacks are searching for vulnerabilities that might be exploited later.

To catch a replay of the conference call, go to Security Predictions 2012: Big Data, Social, Mobile, and Cloud Embolden the Security Community.  You’ll need to register first.  You can access more IDC related security content at IDC Security Research

Comments

[Security Jobs]

The big trends today of social, mobile, cloud, and analytics are all putting more pressure on IT security professionals today to provide an infrastructure that can withstand almost any type of attack.

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[IT Security]

I certainly see the increase in managed security services. Businesses will face a growing need for security and atthe same time the growing complexity of IT security will facilitate the outsourcing to knwoledgable companies and with the lower risk of a fixed monthly price.

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Information technology (IT) has become one of the most valuable businesses of today. It is worth knowing how trends in the market have kept IT experts delve into creating new ways to keep people interested and updated on significant changes.

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I think this list has proven to be true. We can only wait and see what 2013 has in store. More green technology will be entering the home. We'll be doing good if we can go anywhere without looking at a touchscreen.