TREND: Infrastructure revolution creating new security/privacy threats

Overview: As new ICT infrastructure create new efficiencies and innovation benefits, this in turn creates new security and privacy threats and mitigation strategies. Key dimensions of infrastructural change include:

• Centralisation of computing resources and cloud computing enablement.
• Enhancements to communications networks (3G->4G->5G) .
• Number and diversity of IP-enabled devices increasing, creating new “Internets of Things”.
• New innovations in relation to usability and browser interfaces.
• New software and hardware development infrastructures.

Such infrastructure shifts create new challenges in relation to securing data at rest and in motion, as well as securing different layers of the relevant hardware and software stacks involved for that infrastructure scenario. In particular, legacy threat categories previously mitigated in previous generation infrastructures (e.g. PC-based operating systems) may be re-exposed for newer infrastructures (e.g. mobile operating systems).

Increased connectivity and interdependency between infrastructure elements is also creates new security threats, particularly of a more cascading and systemic nature.

Impact: Such infrastructure shifts are a core driver of next-generation PACs innovation, and shifting PACs concerns away from the niche category and towards being a core mainstream element of ICT.

TREND: Evolving cyber threat landscape

Overview: Threat intelligence resources have reported increased variation and sophistication of threat types and techniques used to compromise systems [FIR2_14], [SYM14]. There is now an increased emphasis on threat actors that behave in a co-ordinated and persistent manner, malware with polymorphic properties that is more dynamic and difficult to detect, and attacks using a multi-stage, multi-vector approach. New attack malware combining an array of entry points, including web, email, file and mobile application exploits in particular. Such evolving threats place increased strain and pressure on critical legacy systems in particular.

Impact: A core and fundamental driver for new PACS solutions and technology improvements.

TREND: New macro ICT technology trends – PACS as an enabler and barrier

Overview: A range of macro-ICT trends have emerged, with a two-way impact in privacy and security. Macro ICT technology trends include:

• Cloud computing adoption (Public, Private, Hybrid)
• Social media revolution (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.)
• Big Data (Hadoop, Hive, MongoDB etc)
• Mobile computing and new IP-enabled devices

Adoption and leveraging of new technologies underlying such trends is dictated to a significant extent by user perceptions of security and privacy associated with each of these macro trends, and the ability to provide security and privacy assurance for each. For example, Cloud computing introduces concerns around access and control of sensitive data [ENI09]. Use of social media increases new personal privacy threats. Big Data analytics allows inferences to be made on data that has been hidden or anonymised, increasing privacy risk. Mobile Computing re-exposes security threats from traditional computing platforms, while inheriting standard online/web application threats

1. Monitoring, auditing, compliance and incident management
2. Data security
3. Access control
4. Business continuity and disaster recovery among other areas

Impact: Aside from the focus of securing assets transitioned to the cloud, cloud is also providing a new business model alternative and new technology delivery mechanism for PACs vendors across virtually all PACs sub-segments, regardless of whether assets being protected are within the organisation’s direct control or managed by third parties. 

TREND: Increased M2M communication may threaten security/privacy

Increased machine-to-machine (M2M) communications will be an expected by-product of the increasing number of IP-enabled devices that will occur in line with Ubiquitious Computing and Internet of things (IoT) developments. In particular, the technical challenges of ensuring trust between “things” as opposed to between people and technology will become of greater relevance.

This will introduce new security and privacy issues and in turn a demand for better mitigation solutions. The increased number of devices communicating in relation to individuals will increase the range of information collected about them – for example health parameters, reading habits, location data, energy use, driving style and eating habits among other possibilities. While it is technologically possible to collect and centralised such data, solutions will have to be built with the privacy rights of users in mind [OECD12], potentially by enforcing a more decentralised data management approach. In the US automotive sector for example, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently announced that it may make vehicle-to-vehicle communications mandatory. Among other implications, this move would call into question whether and to what extent OEMs can protect their driver-generated data and keep them proprietary [MCK14].

From a more core security perspective, M2M communication will increase the risk of systemic and cascading security events happening in the absence of greater manual and human intervention. 

Impact: Another IoT-based dimension of emerging PACs challenges which will in turn drive demand for new PACs technologies and solutions

TREND: Virtualisation technologies add new dimension to IT security risks

Overview: As IT and Operations personnel have rapidly expanded the use of virtualisation technologies in recent years, CISOs and other security stakeholders have been forced to play catch-up. The advantages of virtualisation technology (lower total ownership costs, flexibility, high availability and faster time to deployment) are so compelling that enforcing security discipline around use of virtualisation technology is more difficult than other IT security areas.

Virtualisation security challenges include:

1. Difficulties in monitoring activities “inside” VMs from a security perspective.
2. Increased and scaled vulnerability to insider threats around VM deployments that are instantly collapsible or expandable (the Shionogi insider incident in Japan being one incident example [FOR12]).
3. Increased difficulty in maintaining security controls in a dynamic VM environment, and enforcing security change management principles.
4. Increased compliance footprint.
5. The introduction of new infrastructure layers to protect, such as admin consoles, management consoles, guest VM nodes, management server nodes, as well as the hypervisor itself.

Impact: Increased need for PACs technologies to become “virtualisation-literate”, and being able to transparently monitor both virtual and physical elements of infrastructure. Such solutions can simultaneously provide a breadth of IT operations data, thereby expanding potential value propositions. Similar issues exist around cloud environments which are increasingly centred on used of virtualised technology. 

TREND: Rising importance of identity and access management across the extended enterprise

Overview: The rapid adoption of cloud services, mobile devices and a large quantity of mobile apps, has extended the identity boundary of today’s enterprise. For today’s enterprise, the identity and access management (IAM) represents the ability to authenticate users and oversee access by a variety of populations, from employees to partners to consumers and protect a variety of sensitive resources.

Impact: New technologies, especially IoT, are creating new kinds of devices and new networks which are introducing new threats for which new security approaches are required. This emerging market presents cybersecurity vendors with new opportunities for innovation and this new market.