A couple of years ago, the security industry claimed the anti-virus industry was dead. This isn’t strictly true. On one side, pure anti-virus companies do not exist any longer, but instead of security companies limiting themselves to a single, traditional anti-virus product, they have expanded their offerings to become information security organisations.
Lutz Blaeser, MD of Intact Security, says in this way, security companies are transforming to meet the security needs of the future, and adapt to the ever-changing, increasingly sophisticated threat landscape. He cites an example as Bitdefender, a top security company that Intact distributes. “Bitdefender is now creating hardware that embeds its scanning technology to fend off emerging attacks on consumer-grade IoT devices.”
The market for this sort of technology is on the edge of maturity, so the need for security where the IoT is concerned is becoming more and more crucial every day. “Gartner has forecast that 274.6 million wearable electronic devices will be sold globally this year, a whopping increase of 18.4% from last year,” he adds.
According to Blaeser, an additional area that has great potential for innovation is the enterprise security arena. “For many years cyber thieves have been eyeing enterprises as potential treasure troves of valuable data. For this reason, businesses need the maximum available protection, to ensure their data, and therefore their customers, are kept safe.”
This is an area where Bitdefender shines, says Blaeser. “Bitdefender was recently named a Visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms.”
In order for the security industry to develop there are two things that must happen, he says: staying at the forefront of technology and doing everything possible to become an industry game-changer. Businesses must bear these two points in mind, and continually strive towards them if the industry is to thrive and stay ahead of the bad guys.
“In terms of what developments we can expect in the enterprise security sector this year we can expect a rise in machine learning,” says Blaeser. “Advances in deep learning will help security vendors better their malware detection rates, through the employment of real-time, predictive analysis. We might see a new class of security solutions develop to pre-empt zero-day attacks that have been so detrimental to organisations in the past.”
He sees the increased adoption of open-source as another trend among CIOs this year. “CIOs are recognising that innovation is key to gaining a competitive advantage in this new landscape, and organisations of all types and sizes will look to open-source for innovation as well as critical business operations. In terms of security, open-source is being refined and tweaked all the time by dedicated teams, and is becoming increasingly proactive in its approach.”
Speaking of the IoT, Blaeser says security standards around this trend will continue to evolve. “As more organisations adopt IoT technologies, OEMs and device manufacturers will be compelled to define new IoT standards that ensure not only efficiency, but that security is built in to these devices from the ground up, not slapped on as an afterthought.”
2016 will also be the year of the single-platform security solution. “Companies are looking to save time and money, and will look to all-in-one offerings for their security needs. We’ll see a rise in a unified management console to manage and control mobile, on-premise and virtualised endpoints in the business. Point solutions are on the way out, and administrators will see their role being streamlined.”
Finally, we will see managed security services providers (MSSPs) adopting integrated security. MSS is a multi-billion dollar market, and it is only going to grow, according to Blaeser. As a reaction to increasingly complex threats and adversaries, MSSPs will take security specialists on board to help better protect their customers, as well as manage security along the chain, from deployment and policy setting to security monitoring.
