The nexus forces: Security trends changing how you work

Things move quickly in the IT industry and as they move, they change. There are security trends out there right now that could give IT a whole new look.

Mobile

Bring your own device (BYOD) is here to stay. Driving this change is the Millennial worker who wants to blend work and personal time, which means using their own device to get work done on personal time. The consumerizaton of technology is not likely to slow down and employees will be using their own technology to be productive on the job. As BYOD increases, IT departments are losing control of the technology and their ability to service it.

It’s highly beneficial for IT professionals to accommodate mobile users on a variety of devices. Onboarding the multiple devices is proving a challenge for IT departments who are no longer fully managing the devices, but are forced to service them. We’ve already seen BYOD drive new segments of IT like mobile-device management and mobile data protection and the landscape will continue to change as IT figures out how to work with BYOD.

Some IT departments have reacted to BYOD by creating policies covering how these devices can and should be used to access company data and systems. But a lot of IT departments still have no process to accommodate BYOD.

At the very least, the increase in employees using their own mobile devices to work means IT security professionals need to be vigilant about keeping up with the latest threats against, and vulnerabilities with these devices.

Cloud

Cloud computing is changing the way we work; it allows small businesses access to better technology and large businesses the cost benefits  of using systems they don’t need to maintain. But, cloud computing is changing more than how work gets done; it’s changing how IT professionals do their jobs from day to day and even what skillsets they need to posses.

Most often, users can access information on the cloud without IT department approval. Normal security controls are becoming less effective at keeping data safe in the cloud. It’s harder to detect compromises. More monitoring is needed to keep networks safe and detect attacks. Greater percentages of the IT budget will need to be spent on rapid detection and response. Gartner predicts that by 2020, detection and response will be 75% of IT budgets, up from 10% in 2012.

Further, cloud computing means that IT professionals spend less time updating and maintaining systems and can spend more time finding innovative ways to support business processes. They need to plan for a cloud environment, but they don’t need to operate it. As more systems move to the cloud, IT professionals will be supporting services, not systems, which requires a much different skillset.

These are only two examples of trends changing the IT security industry, though there are many others. What issues are you finding in your workplace and how is your IT security team dealing with them?