Trends 2016: Cybersecurity still has a long way to go

By Jagdish Mahapatra

In the last five years, three major forces have been responsible for the growth of cybersecurity industry, viz: the expanding attack surface, the industrialization of hacking, and the complexity and fragmentation of the IT security market. Looking ahead, data from our research labs indicates that the main trends for 2016 will be:

1. The continuing expansion of the attack surface (from rise of IoT, entrenchment of BYOD and initiatives from the government like Digital India, et.al)
2. Cybercriminals evolving their tactics to now include attack vectors like Ransomware leading to the rising cost of breaches in the enterprise with ransomware attacks on the rise
3.  A clear lack of integrated security technologies, and a shortage of skilled security professionals.

On the business/enterprise front, attackers have already developed a level of sophistication that is well beyond the hobby-hacker of the past. We’re clearly seeing a streak of organized and targeted crime as was also evident from some of the high-profile security incidents from 2015 in India and globally. Additionally, with the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), the attack surface has expanded exponentially, thus making our environment potentially more vulnerable. Devices will continue to grow in volume and variety, and the forecast for Connected Devices by 2020 is now 200 billion and climbing.

To address the business, technology, and threat landscape realities facing them, CSOs and CTOs will be required to help organizations get to where they need to be, using technologies that will enable and not hinder their businesses. Simultaneously, they will need to work with security vendors to understand what kinds of threats could be confronting them tomorrow, and far into the future. The 2016 threat predictions from Intel Security predicts that threats are likely to run into a gamut of trends, from the likely threats around ransomware, attacks on automobile systems, infrastructure attacks, and the warehousing and sale of stolen data in 2016.

Our top priority for the coming year will be to look at enabling businesses around the globe with better security solutions to effectively defend against data breaches and targeted attacks. We have pioneered a more integrated and more open security system that unifies the key phases of the threat defense lifecycle (which includes protect, detect and correct). Accordingly, our new strategy focuses on the endpoint and the cloud as the most effective areas for advanced visibility and practical operational control. These control points will be facilitated by world-class threat detection and analytics. The strategy also emphasizes a simplified user experience powered by centralized management and a connected architecture across Intel and third-party products. Through this open and integrated system, Intel Security aims to empower organizations to resolve more threats, faster, with fewer resources.

To support the new strategy, we have also invested considerably in designing new solutions that will each serve as a foundation for future technologies and products. For instance:

• McAfee Endpoint Security 10.X delivers a new streamlined and agile endpoint services platform, enabling protection for devices with faster scanning and deployment
• McAfee Active Response, a new endpoint threat detection and response solution, supplies on-demand and continuous visibility into an array of endpoint activities with powerful, automated tools to respond to and monitor threat events.

(The author, Jagdish Mahapatra, is managing director, India and SAARC - Intel Security)