Software engineers, tech developers and businesses large and small are always on guard for the latest cyber threats as well as ways to combat them. And in our increasingly cloud-based data storage world, both risks and solutions to information theft and loss move quickly. So what changes does 2014 hold for this increasingly complex world, especially for businesses reliant on data protection services that are both effective and cost efficient?
Global nonprofit IT association ISACA is sounding some serious alarm bells for technology professionals in the new year, and industry insiders are heeding the call. Here are some changes businesses and security experts should watch for:
• ISACA predicts that the current controversy over data privacy that has been dominating headlines of late will accelerate rather than abate. As such, companies should become more serious about viewing their data as currency that needs to be protected.
• Data volumes are out of control, making them unmanageable and, in many cases, redundant. So data protection experts and the companies they service should strive to consolidate what’s important and eliminate the excess in an effort to promote more efficient sharing and allow for greater privacy control.
• Even though companies and businesses need to be more wary of breaches, it may be harder for them to find cyber security and data analytics experts. It’s estimated that, in 2014, there will be a serious lack of data defenders with the right certifications and skills, and as such they’ll be more in demand and will expect to be better compensated.
• Companies will need to rethink how they use their IT security experts. Whereas in the past those experts were perhaps only responsible for only malware detection and the like, the next generation of security experts should be more proactive, seeking out new and hard-to-detect threats and building internal intelligence capabilities rather than waiting for a cyber attack and scrambling to respond.
• It’s estimated there will be 50 billion devices connected to the Internet by 2020, so businesses should start working on internal policies governing those devices to prevent cyber security breaches. Frighteningly, Lexology estimates that 93 percent of a company’s workforce ignores standard policies meant to protect data.
