Security Will Top IT Concerns for 2012

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Mobile devices, social media and cloud security will drive IT-security concerns in 2012, according to Agiliance, a security-and-risk-management firm.

Those include the further consumerization of IT, challenges related to social media as an instrument in cyberwarfare, stricter enforcement and new legislation focused on data protection, as well as the emerging need to assess cloud-service providers' ability to enforce security policies.

"In 2012, we will see progressive organizations applying a risk-based, continuous approach to security," said Torsten George, vice president of worldwide marketing at Agiliance. "By doing so, they will be able to make risk visible, measurable and actionable."

The company's top five predictions for the coming year are:

• Mobile Devices and Social Media: New products and services will emerge that deal with issues regarding employer-owned versus employee-owned data on mobile devices. These products will go beyond anti-virus and malware software. For social media threats, the capabilities of security tools will be extended to tackle increased social media cyberwarfare.
• Cloud Computing Security: There will be an acceleration of efforts to create standards around cloud security, and independent, continuous monitoring of cloud-service providers' security controls will become a standard part of service-level agreements.
• Legislative Initiatives: In the second half of 2012, a government mandate will be passed that will circulate the implementation of a proactive Information Security Risk Management system and related best practices to tackle cybersecurity threats.
• Anti-Cybercrime Collaboration: Sharing of sensitive threat information will become vital to prevent widespread cyberattacks across different verticals and industries. The increase in cybersecurity attacks and data breaches will lead to the introduction of a formal information-sharing database.
• Risk is Security's New Compliance: There will be a further increase in demand for software tools that provide both advanced reporting capabilities and interconnectivity to ensure that remediation actions can be triggered and followed through easily. To better describe the capabilities of these tools, analysts will create a new software category called Security Risk Management.

These predictions are based on Agiliance's engagement with Global 2000 companies, government agencies, security vendors, industry analysts and security consultants, as well as market research the company conducts on a regular basis.