What's New IT security spending is expected to increase over the next year, according to a survey of 900 IT leaders by IT staffing firm TEKsystems. IT security was ranked third in terms of IT spending priority, behind mobile and cloud; spending on storage ranked fourth and business intelligence and big data ranked fifth. Overall, 62 percent of IT leaders polled said they expect an increase in their organization's IT budget, up from only 48 percent in last year's survey. In terms of having the biggest IT impact on the enterprise, security ranked second, behind business intelligence and big data in the top position. Mobile, cloud and virtualization rounded out the top five in terms of impact on the enterprise. In addition, a full 81 percent of IT leaders expect an increase in IT salaries, up from 55 percent last year. Of those, 71 percent expected a salary hike of up to 5 percent. The IT jobs where at least 60 percent of IT leaders expect salary increases are programmers and developers, software engineers, project managers, architects, security, business analysts, mobile, and business intelligence and big data. "In comparison to last year, IT leaders have significantly shifted their outlooks to be positive overall in IT budget allocations as well as their expectations for hiring and salary increases. Most interesting is that there seems to be greater demand for the core skill sets of programming and application development and software engineering. IT leaders indicate exceptional talent has become harder to find in these areas and have adjusted their salary strategies accordingly," says TEKsystems Research Manager Jason Hayman. For more:
- see TEKsystems' release Related Articles:
Worldwide IT security spending to reach $30.1 billion in 2017, says Canalys
Microsoft leads growing SaaS content security market, says Infonetics Read more about: big data, IT budget
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Cloud-based sandboxing can overcome some of the limitations of on-premise sandboxing appliances, argues Aviv Raff, chief technology officer at cloud-based security firm Seculert, in a Security Week article. Limitations of on-premise sandboxing appliances, which test suspicious executables for malware, include trouble with stopping targeted attacks and thwarting attacks against less common desktop environments, Raff argues. Raff, who obviously has an interest in promoting a cloud-based solution, cited a number of reasons why cloud-based sandboxes provide better protection than on-premise products. First, cloud-based sandboxes are scalable and track malware over hours or days "to build robust malware profiles of targeted threats (such as the one that used a fake Mandiant APT1 report), or to uncover 'Time Bomb' attacks that need to be simulated with custom times and dates (such as Shamoon)," he says. In addition, cloud-based sandboxes can provide malware protection in multiple locations. "For example, attackers often target offices that are located in a different region than where the on-premise sandbox is running (typically the enterprise's headquarters). As such, the attacker will not respond to the malware since it communicates from a different region. However, cloud-based sandboxes avoid this by allowing the malware to run from different locations worldwide," Raff argues. Raff cautions that even cloud-based sandboxing will not prevent all targeted attacks. He recommends that enterprises combine sandboxing with botnet interception, traffic log analysis and security appliances "to create a comprehensive network security system." For more:
- read the Security Week article Related Articles:
ViaSat, Green Hills Software team on 'military-grade' security for Android
Enterprises use old technology to combat new APT-style attacks Read more about: Targeted Attacks, Malware Protection
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Research firm Gartner is advising multinational enterprises to maintain two data centers per continent of major business activity to improve disaster recovery and operational efficiency. More than two data centers increase costs--often hundreds of millions of dollars--and complexity unnecessarily, while fewer than two undermines disaster recovery plans, notes Gartner. "The twin data center topology provides many benefits, such as allowing for an adequate level of disaster recovery. This can be through an active/active configuration where each data center splits the production and development work and can fail over the load of the other site in the event of a disaster," explains Rakesh Kumar, research vice president at Gartner. "However, this presupposes a synchronous copy of data and, so, a physical separation of about 60 to 100 miles. This may be too risky for certain industries, such as banking and government security, and so a third site may be required," he adds. More than two data centers and the enterprise has trouble responding to business changes and IT has trouble managing many data centers. "It's a fact that most global organizations run too many data centers in too many countries. This is normally the result of business expansion, either organically or through acquisition over many years," says Kumar. "While the logic of business growth makes sense, having too many data centers results in excessive capital and operational costs, an overly complex architecture and, in many cases, a lack of business-IT agility," he adds. For more:
- see Gartner's release Related Articles:
IP VPNs contribute to strong growth in US Ethernet revenues, says IDC
Disaster recovery lessons Read more about: data centers, Disaster Recovery Plans
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Canadian bank Peoples Trust is sending out letters to customers notifying them of a breach of a website database by a Chinese hacker group. According to a copy of the letter obtained by DataBreaches.net, the bank hired a forensic investigator to determine the nature of a "possible intrusion" of a database used to collect online application information. The investigator determined that that the database was indeed compromised by a Chinese group. The personal information accessed by the Chinese group includes customer name, address, telephone number, email address, date of birth and social insurance number. The bank stressed that the database is "totally separate from our banking systems so no banking information, such as balances, account numbers, logins or passwords could be obtained. As a precautionary measure, we immediately removed all data from this area and enhanced identification procedures and daily processes in our Deposit Services area to monitor for unusual activity pending a full investigation. To date we have seen no suspicious activity," the letter reads. The bank said it informed the police and Canada's Privacy Commissioner about the breach, as well as two Canadian credit bureaus. "To mitigate the risk, Peoples Trust has arranged for a flag to be placed on your credit file which will alert companies accessing your credit information that your data may have been compromised and that lenders should take additional steps to verify your identity before transacting further. The notation will stay on your credit file for a period of 6 years unless you choose to have it removed," the bank related. The DataBreaches.net report did not indicate how many customers received the letter. For more:
- see the Peoples Trust letter Related Articles:
Credit card processor PayJunction notifies sales agents of personal data breach
Whipping the mules: Cashing out gets harder for fraudsters Read more about: personal information breach
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The U.S. virtual desktop infrastructure market is forecast by TechNavio to increase at an 8.5 percent compound annual growth rate over the next five years, fueled in part by the need for secure access to enterprise data by mobile devices. Leading VDI vendors in the space are Citrix Systems, Microsoft, Oracle, and VMware according to TechNavio. Other vendors include Deskton, MokaFive, Quest Software, RedHat and Unidesk. "There is a rapid increase in the access of enterprise data and application by end-users is using smartphones, tablets, and other handheld devices. Virtual desktop infrastructure images are being stored in the data centers and accessed over the cloud infrastructure, which is decreasing the operational costs considerably," observes the TechNavio research team that prepared the report. "Further, with the cloud-based virtual desktop solutions finding increasing adoption, there are many applications being supported on the cloud which are being accessed over the virtual desktop infrastructure solutions," the team adds. Using VDI products, enterprises and end users are able to access the applications and data security from any location using their mobile devices. The data is not downloaded onto the mobile device, so there is not a risk of corporate data loss if the device is lost or stolen. At the same time, enterprises are concerned about the "huge capital expenditure" required for restructuring the enterprise network to support the virtualized applications and services. Enterprises are required to buy the virtualization software and supporting applications required to deploy the applications for their employees. For more:
- see the TechNavio release Related Articles:
BYOD, cloud fueling demand for mobile encryption products
VMware's security efforts lack focus, argues analyst Read more about: VMware
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The National Institute of Standards and Technology plans to hold its last workshop next week for private industry to provide feedback on its cybersecurity framework for critical infrastructure.
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