Time was when all CIOs had to worry about in terms of security was whether their company’s PCs were protected with up to date anti-virus. Then came the LAN and the scope shifted to the server/gateway but it was still mostly about anti-this or anti-that (virus, spam, you name it). Today, that’s all changed. If you look at a large organization, IT security, or information security as some like to call it, encompasses a wide swath ranging from vanilla endpoint protection through email and Web security all the way to preventing Denial of Service Attacks or protecting physical facilities through surveillance, which is shifting towards IP at a pretty good clip.
IP/network surveillance is currently at about 25% of the overall market but is poised to account for over 50% by 2015. Securing virtual machines is a pressing concern at a time when server virtualization is quite common in Indian enterprises. Then there’s mobile security, an area that’s largely ignored at present by many organizations but, with the advent of BYOD, will soon occupy a prominent place on the IT head’s list of things to take care of ASAP. Last but not least, security delivered through the Cloud model, call it SaaS security or Cloud security, is starting to catch on although, at this point, like the larger Cloud market, it’s still finding its feet.
Going forward, we expect to see companies go for a hybrid model of security taking advantage of the best of both worlds—on premise and the Cloud. Neither model solves every problem but, together, they can be surprisingly effective. The on premise portion will transform into a private Cloud over time. Mobile security will likely be more from the remote management of devices perspective and technologies that allow companies to partition employee-owned devices, or those handed over by the company for that matter, into personal and official areas will prove popular. Managing security in virtualized environments is a wholly different ball game and conventional solutions won’t do the trick. Vendors are rising to the challenge and we expect to see innovative solutions emerge in this area—many already have. All in all, it’s an interesting time on the enterprise information security front.
– Prashant L Rao
Editor, Express Computer
prashant.rao@expressindia.com