Debate: Organizations will be better able to handle data breaches in 2011.
PRO
Grant Ho, director of product and solutions marketing, Novell
Security threats are on the rise, and we'll continue to see an increasing number of them in 2011, primarily driven by the complexity of securing more endpoints (specifically mobile devices) to enterprise networks. The rapid growth of key industry trends, such as BYOP (bring your own PC) to work, combined with exploding smartphone usage – particularly for consumer-driven devices, such as the Android, iPhone and iPad – are among top contributors to these challenges. With today's enterprises not necessarily equipped with the appropriate endpoint management policies – largely due to the diversity of what is coming into the enterprise and the speed at which it is arriving – they will continue to face an increasing number of data breaches and security risks. In short, the real difference in 2011 will not be the number of security breaches reported, but new steps enterprises will be required to take in order to deal with the growing number of endpoints that must ultimately be secured and managed.
AGAINST
Edy Almer, VP of product management and marketing, Safend
In the era of WikiLeaks and hacktivists, it might seem counterintuitive to say that the number of records lost due to data breaches will decrease in 2011, but the security threat landscape has changed significantly due to better threat awareness and strong incentives for organizations to implement solutions in a diligent way. Enterprises, their internal auditors and IT professionals have become far better at understanding security risks in a changing business environment and, subsequently, the need to raise their game. Yes, securing data on endpoints will be a key technology driver in 2011, but thanks to regulatory guidelines and attention-grabbing headlines, large organizations recognize that a single data breach can cost several times more than investing in strong encryption and port and content control for every laptop and endpoint device. HIPAA requirements and PCI updates will also force smaller organizations to report breaches, so we will see more security breaches reported by them this year, but with less critical data lost.
