‘What 2 things are most likely to change the security industry in the next 2 years? And why?’
I’d probably start off with the famous quote attributed to the French critic Jean-Baptise Alphonse Karr, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
The security industry is a bit like an episode of Star Trek in that it’s pretty formulaic. A bad guy appears and cuts through the defenses, our heroes survive the initial onslaught and work on understanding the attacks; Kirk gets into a fist fight before making out with a green female alien with blue horns. In the meantime the clever guys devise a countermeasure, deploy it and everything returns to normal.
When we look at the security industry, the challenges that organisations face are broadly the same and they continue to fail and succeed at the same things. Some new attack vector emerges and cripples some systems, some clever researchers devise countermeasures and move on. Given the overall trends; I don’t particularly see anything change in that regard. However, we’ve seen changes occur in the public domain with regards to the perception of security with it coming to the forefront of social and political discussions.
However, this public front is less about pure security, and more revolves around privacy – and that is the catalyst which will stimulate more conversation and debate over the coming years. Given enough time, maybe the infosec supernova will implode and we’ll be left with the white dwarf of compliance and the black hole of privacy as its legacy.
Javvad Malik | 451 Research | Senior Analyst, Enterprise Security | @J4vv4D
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