Secure Your Data Center First: McAfee Indian Security Industry Trends for 2014

For the year 2014, McAfee has come up with its annual security industry trends for India, and has shared some amazing insights into the future.

2013 has been quite an eventful year for Indians in terms of cyber fraud, as ICICI bank was infamous for letting hackers go lose on their servers. Information security and cyber safety has been one of the top concerns for India netizens, as this report suggests. Internet safety was discussed and methods to prevent cyber fraud was shared everywhere.

Even Indian government jumped into the fray, and started surveillance for maximum safety and preventing any cyber fraud. Indian Government also launched a National Cyber Security Policy for 2013.

But as we all know, information is the real power today, and hackers and anti-social elements will leave no stone unturned to get access to it. This is the reason that this McAfee report on Indian security industry trends for 2014 is extremely important and relevant for every company.

The top 5 trends as mentioned by McAfee:

1) Secure Data Centre As They Are The Nerve Centre of Any Enterprise:

For any medium to large scale enterprise, their data centre is their nerve centre in terms of data transfer, server exchange and information access by various employees. As Cloud computing is slowly eclipsing traditional data centre business, and the line between virtual and real data centre is blurring, enterprises and organizations should do everything to protect their data centre from security lapse.

2) Threat of BYOD:

A latest trend which is being experienced across several enterprises is: BYOD or Bring Your Own Device. This practice is giving way to more exposure of more loopholes in terms of enterprise security. Although it brings much needed mobility and flexibility, it also introduces threat from hackers and viruses which can seep into the IT framework of any organization. Data Loss prevention, Network Access Control, Internal Intrusion Prevention System, Firewalls etc needs to be constantly updated and polished in order to fight the threat coming from BYOD.

3) Updating Security Mechanisms:

McAfee in its research found several enterprises and organizations severely lacking in advanced threat defense against some of the complex malwares and viruses. They are still dependent on their legacy security products or waiting for the provider/vendor to update their anti-virus systems. Such lack of planning can severely dent their position and make them vulnerable to cyber frauds. In order to respond to data security breach in a faster way, they are required to be updated continuously.

4) Real Time Tracking of Data Is Essential:

The IT infrastructure of any enterprise should be designed in a way that CIO and their team can effectively track the flow of data in real time, without any obstacle. Taking an example of SAP, the power of enterprise software access lies with the most essential management team, who can view the minute details regarding any transaction at any given time. Such flexibility and real time tracking of security threat is required from Indian enterprises in 2014, if they wish to thwart any attempts of data security breach.

5) Internet of Things Making Data More Vulnerable:

By 2020, there would be 26 billion devices which would be interconnected and sharing data on real time basis. The same IP protocol and wireless networks which are being used to access Internet and the Web would be used to connect ATM kiosks, your washing machine, your car stereo and traffic signals. Imagine the havoc which any decent hacker can unleash if he gets access to one network. Being an interconnected universe, even one single hack can be compounded to unprecedented levels. McAfee report amplifies this threat, and suggests some concrete and solid ways to prevent cyber fraud and hacking of data in these times of interconnected devices and Internet of Things.