Ian Kilpatrick, chairman Wick Hill Group, specialists in secure IP infrastructure solutions, looks at five key IT security trends and solutions for 2015

Rise in security breaches

The current high level of security breaches, from the largest organisation down to the smallest, will continue unabated. What will also grow in 2015 will be the acceptance that security breaches are pretty well unavoidable for the majority of organisations. Companies will need to change their approach to security in order to reflect this. Security spending will continue to increase, with spending growth higher on asset security over perimeter security.

Cloud/virtualisation

The ongoing growth in cloud (and cloud data breaches) will carry on boosting awareness of the need to manage risks in a virtualised world. Identity management technologies will continue to experience a resurgence. Some of these technologies, such as two-factor authentication, despite already being well-established, will experience high growth, as companies secure access to key data and application assets.

Mobile and wireless

The new multi-gigabyte 802.11ac wireless standard, coupled with BYOD, tablets and the apps they support, will continue to drive businesses into a mobile universe, willingly or unwillingly. The slow shift from a wired network to a wireless one will interestingly be driven by SMBs and public sector organisations.

Wireless and mobile security has lagged considerably behind the security curve. For example, research has shown that the majority of smartphones (i.e. devices with more capabilities than many old laptops) don't even have PIN protection, never mind antivirus, encryption, remote wipe etc. So there is huge growth potential for both security on these devices, and also for securing the wireless connection. This has already been highlighted by a number of high profile security breaches in 2014 and will become even more evident in 2015.

Big Data

The continued growth of big data and virtualisation has already shown that virtualisation security and the security of data farms in general is often lower than that of the data, before it was migrated to data farms. The huge volumes of data thefts will continue to accelerate, with a corresponding increase in compliance fines, as organisations struggle to upgrade their security to keep pace.

The next area for big data management is log files. Organisations have huge amounts of business beneficial information in their log files. However, these files are typically held in large numbers of silos and are often treated as more of a storage problem, than a business benefit. 2015 will show a clear shift toward aggregation and analysis of these log files. 

Visibility reporting and remediation systems

One of the big challenges for organisations is the sheer volume of security information they have to deal with. Multiple security solutions create multiple reports and it is often difficult, if not impossible, to get the big picture and identify the actual threat. In fact, the average time from breach to detection is over 100 days!

Significant growth in consolidation solutions can be expected. However, given that most organisations aren't green field sites, there will be even greater growth in solutions that report on and carry out remediation over multiple security platforms.

Compliance, an acceptance that breaches will occur, and a fundamental need for C- level access to relevant security information, will drive this area strongly forward. 

Bio Ian Kilpatrick

Ian Kilpatrick is chairman of international value added distributor Wick Hill Group, specialists in market development for secure IP infrastructure solutions. Kilpatrick has been involved with the Group for almost 40 years. Wick Hill supplies organisations from enterprises to SMEs, through an extensive value-added network of accredited VARs.

Kilpatrick has an in-depth experience of IT, with a focus on networks, particularly security. He has a strong vision of the future in IT, focussing on business needs and benefits, rather than just technology. Ian Kilpatrick is a published author and has written numerous articles and features, both domestically and internationally, as well as being a regular speaker at conferences, seminars and exhibitions.