Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2016.  Read them in this 8th Annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

Contributed by Johnnie Konstantas, Director, Security Solutions Marketing & Business Development for Gigamon

Enterprise Virtualization Efforts Will Dictate a New Approach to Security

It's well established that virtualization, cloud computing, mobility and emerging technologies like software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) are forcing enterprise IT to make dramatic changes to their network. At the same time, and as a result of these shifts, enterprises are experiencing unprecedented levels of vulnerability from overt and covert network threats.  In 2016, we expect to see the following take place as a result:

1. Server virtualization will become a major driver of security sales. While SDN and NFV dominate network virtualization conversations, they are still not broadly implemented. What is clear is that server virtualization of security-intense workloads is now at critical mass, with the vast majority of applications and data being served off of virtual machines. Every organization is now looking at VM provisioning with new eyes, thus virtualized versions of security products and visibility platforms will be deployed in record numbers.
2. In 2016, we will see more collaboration across operations groups to improve organizational security, specifically among security, IT operations, and network operations teams. The changes in network architecture required to accommodate machine-to-machine traffic and new detection-based defense initiatives, will require teams to work together.
3. The tide will turn on cyberattacks among the most-well protected companies. That isn't to say that breaches will be eliminated, but that sophisticated attackers are going to find it harder to make gains. The reason is a mixture of a better security posture among organizations, and increased scrutiny of hackers from both businesses and law enforcement.
4. Security tool contention for traffic will reach an all-time high, requiring more organizations to deploy pervasive visibility and security delivery tools to make monitoring continuous and pervasive.
5. SDN will continue to be discussed, debated and highly regarded, but it will still not be broadly implemented. The same traditional network hardware that worked in 2015 will work in 2016.
6. By the end of 2016, username/password security will be eliminated or on the way out. Multi-factor authentication will become the norm. MFA will arrive with the need to make risk-based decisions about who or what has access to assets and organizations will assign reputational scores to end users that are used to compute authorization. 
7. The encryption of data, both at rest and in-transit, will continue to be a major issue as governments grapple with how to provide law enforcement with access to encrypted traffic. Startups will emerge that seek to provide answers to this problem, and traditional infrastructure providers will also look to leverage their established position in the network to solve the problem.
8. Machine learning in security apps will have another year in relative obscurity. While start-ups that can predict bad user behaviors from big data inputs abound, the area of predictive analytics is still in its infancy both from a development and an adoption standpoint. It is, however, a very promising technology.
9. In 2016, governments and standards bodies will have a renewed and increased focus on what is acceptable in security, addressing key issues of privacy, information sharing and associated issues.

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About the Author

Johnnie Konstantas heads Gigamon's security solutions marketing and business development. With 20+ years in telecommunications, as well as data and cybersecurity, she has done a little bit of everything spanning engineering, product management and marketing for large firms and fledglings. Most recently, she was Vice President of Marketing at Dato, a company pioneering large-scale machine learning. She was also Vice President of Marketing at Altor Networks (acquired by Juniper), an early leader in virtualization security and at Varonis Systems (VRNS). She thrives on helping firms of all sizes establish and sustain category leadership.