Data security threats broaden for 2011

More than half (54%) of respondents blamed insiders, while only 21% were primarily concerned about hackers. Meanwhile, the study indicates that 70% of respondents are not planning to outsource mission-critical or sensitive data as part of a cloud-project to an external service provider. Imperva CTO Amichai Shulman suggests the survey findings correlate well with the latest IT security trends for 2011, published by Imperva in its November annual report. Analysis of data security incidents by the Imperva Application Defence Centre (ADC) in the past year showed that IT security managers will have to face 2011 with challenges in three key areas, he says: 1. The protection of mobile devices will play a more important role – requiring more complex identification and authentication solutions. 2. Because companies will start moving parts of their data storage and applications to the cloud, cloud-based data security solutions will be required by the end of 2011. 3. The possible increase in state support of cyber-attacks, such as Stuxnet, will require attention to spy networks. "We expect, in the coming months, clearly different threat scenarios that will provide data security managers with a number of major challenges. [But] the biggest potential danger is posed by the growing proliferation of advanced mobile devices used to access corporate networks," says Shulman. "I expect we will see the first major data security incident caused by such high-risk devices. In addition, incidents based on advanced techniques for permanent spying networks will become an increasingly major problem to businesses," he adds.