2015 Predictions for Cloud Security

Featured article written by Bitglass

2014 will go down in history as the year of the data breach. 2015 will be the year of the “digital enterprise” – as the adoption of cloud, mobility and IoT will continue to flourish. Bitglass, a cloud access security broker (CASB), offers its top tech predictions for 2015.

1. “Office Goes Off” -Office 365 will take a massive lead over Google Apps in the enterprise, leading many to believe Microsoft has returned to dominance. In 2013 Microsoft had 1 million users. As of Sept 30^th of this year they had 7 million users.

2. “The Digital Employee Will Be The Victor” – Employee pushback due to privacy concerns will result in a fresh look at BYOD. The industry will seek alternatives to MDM, stalling the growth of the MDM market.

3. “Big Bucks For Medical Data” – Medical records are 50x more valuable than credit cards on the black market. This will be the new target du jour, ushering in a major rise in noncompliance of HIPAA regulations

4. “Buh-Bye Shadow IT, Hello Cloud Apps” – IT efforts to enable their businesses with the cloud apps and mobile devices will directly result in a decrease in Shadow IT prevalence. IT departments will begin reaffirming their position as the designated point of IT responsibility management.

5. “IT Gets SaaSy” – Today almost 67% of healthcare orgs are using SaaS applications, this number will continue to grow in other highly regulated industries as well. Gartner predicts that by 2016, more than 60% of banks around the world will process transactions in the cloud

6. “The Age of Productivity” – Seamless user interaction across devices will be a top priority for IT leaders. Today 40% Employees are using personally owned devices for work.

7. “Training Day – The IT Security Version” – As the number of malware and scams increase, more focus will be placed on making employees more “security saavy.” Security training for employees will become an industry standard as BYOD continues to grow in enterprise popularity

8. “Almost perfect” The idea of 100% security will fade from existence and more budget will be put towards conducting risk assessments and risk mitigation tactics

9. “The Truth Is in The Data” As advanced analytics technologies continue to thrive, demand for a data science approach to security will grow rapidly. Companies will begin using data science to understand where the greatest security vulnerabilities lie within their infrastructure.

Cloud applications and BYOD are redefining the enterprise perimeter. With enterprises becoming increasingly borderless, the number of locations data is being created, stored and pulled from is increasing. Organizations must take a fresh look at their policies for security, compliance and privacy, or risk being breached. A data-centric approach to addressing threats and vulnerabilities in 2015 will be critical to protect enterprise data, customers and employees.