The Road Ahead: Insiders Give Insight on What to Focus on in 2011

“For spammers and scammers, it has gotten a lot harder to penetrate most business email systems. But the Web is still an unlocked back door to a lot of company networks. That leaves them exposed to malware, viruses and even lawsuits in some cases. That’s why we’re going to see a greater focus this year on intelligent, business-grade Web security solutions.”—Joel Smith, Chief Technology Officer, AppRiver

“We’re in a time of profound change that is unlocking amazing benefits. But to leverage these changes we must re-think security for the New Enterprise. The next year companies must place heightened focus on targeted attacks as well as richer outbound controls for email. Targeted phishing and low volume attacks will require both email and Web security technology and the increasing need for controlling sensitive data will lead to extensions to DLP solutions and features that give senders more control and visibility into outbound mail.”—Tom Gillis, Vice President and General Manager of Cisco’s Security Technology Business Unit

“With analysts like Gartner predicting that by 2014 social networking will overtake email as the primary communications vehicle for businesses, 2011 needs to be the year that organizations enable the safe use of social media in the workplace. It is no longer sufficient to be concerned solely about traditional email communications. Email administrators need to evolve to become messaging administrators and plan for how to replicate the same AUP/Regulation and corporate governance policies they have in email to social media security solutions.”—Bradley Anstis, Vice President of Technical Strategy, M86 Security

“Securing data stored in the cloud should be a primary focus for 2011. If these things aren’t your core expertise, you won’t be up to speed on the latest security threats or the best practices for storage management. But, SaaS vendors can plan for and build in security features in every part of the solution, leveraging things like secure software development lifecycles to ensure that security best practices are accounted in our core software, tools, processes and monitoring systems.”—Andrés Kohn, Vice President of Technology, Proofpoint, Inc.

“As the economy continues to pull out of the long recession, IT organizations are re-evaluating their computing architectures so they can take better advantage of advancements in technologies such as virtualization and cloud computing. At the top of their investment priority list is their aging messaging infrastructure. However, in order to gain the benefits that virtualization and cloud technologies provide, enterprises must first focus on modernizing their messaging backbone. With a modern messaging backbone in place, businesses can architect cost effective, secure, and agile hybrid messaging infrastructures that will satisfy all of their messaging requirements well into the future.”—Don Massaro, Chief Executive Officer, Sendmail, Inc.

“Multi-stage, multi-vector tactics are becoming a key characteristic of Next Generation Threats like malware, APT, and botnets. Attacks often begin through email, IM, or social networking then morph or mutate into persistent threats with the ability to expose secrets or cause major productivity loss. Many enterprises do not yet have the ability to detect, visualize, and eliminate these threats on their network. 2011 is the year that enterprise security must adopt technologies—like active network forensics—to give IT real situational awareness of the network.”—Peter Schlampp, Vice President Product Management, Solera Networks

“Tackling the vulnerability and patch management challenge will be a top security priority in 2011. More than 60 percent of malware attacks come from known vulnerabilities, and besides office applications, recent attacks have focused on programs like Adobe Reader, Flash, Java, media players, graphic design tools, and various browsers and browser plug-ins. No matter whether you’re a one-person shop, or manage many thousands of desktops, maintaining not only the operating system, but also the third party applications should be a top priority.”—Gerhard Eschelbeck, Chief Technology Officer of Webroot