In a world where almost everything is digitized, and data is money, information security (or as people refer to it: InfoSec) is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity. InfoSec refers to processes and tools designed and deployed to protect sensitive information from tampering and inspection. You have InfoSec on various levels, such as applications, cloud, infrastructure and cryptography, to name a few. InfoSec has really developed as a field over the last few years for obvious reasons. Every week, there seems to be some sort of cybersecurity breach and companies exposing their client’s data, everyone, from consumer to business professionals to governmental watchdog, has taken notice. Here are some of the critical trends in InfoSec right now.
Photo by Pietro Jeng on Unsplash
Laws
The first notable trend is how governmental organizations are responding. Up until a few years ago, governments didn’t want to or didn’t see fit to, regulate the way commercial companies collect, store and use their customer’s data. The industry was pretty much self-regulating, and strict advancements in InfoSec was more a sideshow of a technical marvel than core business. However, with cybersecurity breaches, data theft, denial of services, massive ransomware attacks, loss of credit card data, etc. it is clear governments can no longer sit on the sidelines. The last few years have seen a flurry of formulation, refinement and implementation of regulations and policy to get a grip on InfoSec in the broader sense. A significant example of that is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that has been introduced in Europe.
A New Industry
We also see a rise in InfoSec professionals and companies. As businesses now see the risk (including monetary) of not having a robust InfoSec policy, it has been put higher on the priority list than ever before. Expecting your IT department to just have InfoSec responsibilities on the side is no longer considered OK. You need to hire trained professionals or, which has become increasingly popular, outsource your InfoSec. Nowadays, it is not uncommon to let an external company takes care of InfoSec, while your company can concentrate on its core competencies. And as InfoSec has become a business in its own right, we see great innovation coming out of it as well. One of the more exciting ones is virtual data rooms, which offer innovations such as secure file sharing.
The Threat Is Ever Present
But not everything is roses and sunshine in the InfoSec world. As we are slowly working on making things as secure as possible, there are forces in the world who want to prove its vulnerability. The good side would be ethical hacking, but on the other side, we have seen and experienced some highly visible hacking incidents. Ransomware being one of the most dangerous ones. This is when a user is led to click on a link or programme file that will seize control of someone’s computer, usually promising to release it if the user sends money to a specific address. TeslaCrypt, SimpleLocker and WannaCry being a few of the significant incidents seen over the last 5 years.
All in all, InfoSec is here to stay, and it will be a constant concern considering our increasing usage and reliance on (online) data. Convenience comes at a price, and that price is diligence on data.
- This post was written by an outside source – See Disclosure Policy
