Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2016. Read them in this 8th Annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Eric Chiu, president, HyTrust
2016 – The Year of Encryption and Other Predictions
As
we approach the end of this year, it's time to think about what's in
store for 2016. While some of these predictions may seem inevitable,
others are more of a reach. That said, sometimes the
speculative reaches end up being dead on even if it takes a while. For
example, in 1968, Arthur C. Clarke, in the novel 2001, a Space Odyssey,
wrote of something that sounds incredibly like an iPad called a Newspad:
"When
he had tired of official reports, memoranda and minutes, he would plug
his . . . Newspad into the ship's information circuit and scan the
latest reports from Earth. One by one, he would
conjure up the world's major electronic papers . . . Each had its own
two-digit reference. When he punched that, a postage-sized rectangle
would expand till it neatly filled the screen and he could read it with
comfort. When he finished he could flash back
to the complete page and select a new subject for detailed examination .
. . one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorbing the
ever-changing flow of information from the news satellites."
So, emboldened by Arthur C. Clarke hitting one out of the park almost 50 years ago, on to the predictions.
2016 will be the year of encryption
- there is a lot of mystery wrapped up in security, given the
sophisticated attacks launched by
nation states and cyber criminals; however, many times the solution is
simple and involves fundamental security principles like good passwords
and encryption for sensitive data. Arguably every year should be the
year of encryption, but we have seen enough
avoidable damage from a lack of encryption (see TalkTalk
shares tank 11% on fears that customer compensation bill could wipe out profits and "I
am surprised....no encryption has been used")
this year that those responsible will start to insist upon encryption
being a fundamental part of the overall storage/security
strategy. The end of US/EU Safe Harbor will also help
push encryption as part of a data privacy mechanism.
Physical servers will join the endangered species list - sure we all know
it's not turtles all the way down
and
that eventually there needs to be some sort of hardware for all this
cloud to run on, but the average IT worker will have less and less to do
with physical servers and will be working almost exclusively with VMs
in those cases where this is not the case already.
And then there were three
- speaking of consolidation, I expect to see further
consolidation of the public cloud market with additional exists similar
to the recent passing of HP's Helion public cloud. Three is probably
about the right number of public cloud providers, leaving Amazon,
Microsoft and one other major player standing once
the music stops.
Hyperconverged infrastructure will be an increasingly popular place to keep your stacks of turtles
- as mentioned above, those turtles do need to exist somewhere and it
is going to be not just compute being virtualized, but also storage and
increasingly via technologies like VMware NSX. The industry will also be
moving more towards the rack as a unit of
converged computing rather than single appliances and preconfigured
solutions like Vblock will replace the more traditional approach of
where IT groups rolled their own racks from best of breed components.
SDN and SDDC will go mainstream
-
while both the Software Defined Network and the Software Defined Data
Center have been around for a few years, in 2016 we expect to see them
increasingly show up not just
with the web/hyperscale players that they have already gained
widespread acceptance with, but also in enterprises and even to an
extent, the midmarket. The same drivers, namely lower cost and greater
agility in the data center, that are working for convergence
and against old school physical servers are behind SDN and SDDC.
Containers to remain shiny new objects
- the next step in the evolution of
virtualization, containers, will remain shiny, much like SDN a couple
years back. The benefits and savings are obvious, a fact which combined
with the siren-like allure of the new and shiny will encourage both
major players and startups to keep driving innovation
and new solutions in this space. As the maturation of containers
continues to recapitulate the evolution of virtualization, one would
expect to see many of the security issues inherent with the approach
addressed not only by the likes of Docker but also by
a number of third parties, as we've seen with virtualization. There is a
lot of interesting work to be done on this front.
We'll see the Internet of Attack Surface
- as more and more objects come to
join the Internet of Things, the world will be increasingly exposed to
just how ghastly and ugly things can get when you have old open source
with well-known, documented vulnerabilities going unpatched for long
periods of time. We have internet connected lightbulbs
but few who want to manage the updating of such things, including in
many cases manufacturers who are new to security who may be much more
focused on being able to deliver on the promise of connectivity than
they are focused on security - particularly when
greater security could generate more returns or higher support costs.
Automotive hacking will rise
- when a hacker changes some numbers in a database
somewhere, it is one thing. When a hacker pitches your car into a spin
on the highway by ordering full ABS stop on the left side and no brakes
on the right it is a considerably different situation. Look for
everything from theft via compromised key fob codes
to various kinds of hacks involving car LTE and WiFi networks. Any time
a new industry adds significant compute, a whole generation or two
usually ends up suffering a variety of vulnerability as a new industry
learns by painful experience that security by
obscurity is not secure at all and that things like on-board
diagnostics (OBD) and controller area networks (CAN) need to be locked
down. Given that cars are becoming more connected (through WiFi,
Bluetooth, and cellular connections) as well as greater automation
of systems (TPS, electronic braking, steering, throttle, and engine
diagnostics), this will open up back doors to stack overflow and other
attacks.
With more breaches will come more awareness
- expect to see the number of
major breaches continue to rise. As awareness of the cost and impact of
these breaches spreads, the value that organizations place on security
and compliance knowledge at the board and C-level will increase as well.
We urge organizations to remember that compliance
is not security and that addressing even basics like encrypting
everything can go a long way toward either reducing the chances of a
breach or the impact of one should it happen.
Interestingly
much can be done to enhance your security posture simply by taking care
of the basics, particularly things like properly managing accounts,
using good
passwords and encrypting everything that you care about.
So
be it a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyful Kwanza or even a
Festivus for the Rest of Us, regardless of the holidays that you
observe, may they be warm, happy
and secure.
Siri, open the pod bay doors.
##
About the Author
Eric Chiu is a recognized security technology expert and business leader, currently serving as president and co-founder of HyTrust (www.hytrust.com),
the Cloud Security Automation company. He previously served in
executive roles at Cemaphore Systems and MailFrontier, and was a Venture
Capitalist at Brentwood (now Redpoint) and Pinnacle Ventures. He is a
published author and speaks frequently at industry
forums internationally. echiu@hytrust.com.
