Contributed article by Tal Klein, vice president of marketing, Adallom

2014: Safe Harbor and Device-less Malware

2014 will see an outcry and demand for regulated safe harbor in the U.S.

In response to PRISM and the general malaise created by NSA revelations, 2014 will see an outcry and demand for Safe Harbor-like regulations in the United States, just like the significant push for regulation seen in the European Union. This will impact what employers can and cannot do in terms of monitoring what their employees do on corporate devices and corporate networks. Employers will be limited in auditing and monitoring the actions of their employees. It will no longer be acceptable for employers to "monitor" personal employee activities, such as interacting with friends on Facebook on a corporate device.

Distributed malware: 2014 will see malware that lives in a cloud, not on a device.

2014 will reveal the first wave of API targeting malware. Malware that exists as a parasite on existing cloud-service APIs and compromises the API datastream by either siphoning or manipulating data. In the context of "defense-in-depth" it will mean that companies will be unable to use any technologies focused on protecting devices or corporate networks to protect against these threats. To solve the cloud security gap, CIOs will need to look outward rather than inward.

The industry will stop talking about management and start accepting that IT is a service organization

2014 is the year MDM and EMM will lose their panache. 2014 is the year we stop thinking about managing devices and focus our efforts on managing applications. We'll finally accept that devices are not manageable, desktops shouldn't be virtual, users can't be reined in, and cloud is not private. Instead, we'll focus on helping users be productive, supporting them when they run into problems, and protecting them when they're under attack. Like it or not, IT will need to become people persons.

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About the Author

Tal Klein is vice president of marketing at Adallom. Previously, Tal was senior director of products at Bromium where he led product marketing and strategy from stealth mode to a multi-million dollar business, disrupting the enterprise information security landscape. Prior to Bromium, Tal managed integrated product strategy at Citrix, where he developed cross-platform technologies. Tal has also spent over a decade in the webhosting industry developing managed infrastructure services.