Category: Trends

“We have two years of pretty nasty innovation coming from wrong side,” said Dave Anderson, president and CEO of Sendmail Inc. “That may be good from a business perspective for us, but it’s bad from the perspective of our customers.”

While threats may still be real, the market for e-mail security also has turned from a seller’s market to more of a buyer’s market as the first wave of customers have already installed technology such as anti-spam software, said Peter Christy, a principal at market researcher Internet Research Group.

The e-mail security and management market also appears headed toward more consolidation as bigger vendors such as Symantec Corp. and Microsoft Corp. have more aggressively pursued the market and as areas such as anti-virus protection and spam-fight have become more common, panelist said.

As e-mail and other messaging technologies such as instant messaging are accessed more regularly on mobile devices, security threats will follow as well, Anderson said.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1823283,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594

Luckily for financial services, one of the most heavily regulated industries, IT vendors are providing a competitive array of compliance solutions.

IT’s role in compliance is growing because regulation increasingly requires that business activities be monitored, audited, and scrutinised; this translates to the storage and retention of vast amounts of data — and only technology can handle that load. “The nature of IT’s role in compliance varies widely among companies, but it’s clear that growing regulatory requirements are giving IT specialists in companies a lot more work and bringing them into contact with different corporate departments,” says Nigel Holloway, director of executive services for the Americas at the Economist Intelligence Unit in New York.

However, just because technology can assist with compliance, does not mean that it comes cheap. And this is making for a further imperative: spending on compliance must be linked to the investment in wider business goals. For many, this is likely to be the only way they can justify the expenditure compliance necessitates.

According to the EIU, over half of the executives they spoke to said that the annual expenditure in this area of IT is expanding by over 10 percent a year.

http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020487,39200378,00.htm

By 2010, the number of IT staff in the profession will shrink by 15 percent, Gartner predicted Tuesday.

Apart from the rise of outsourcers–who often provide their services from lower-cost countries like India–IT departments also face the diffusion of tech skills throughout an organization, Gartner said. “As IT becomes a more integral part of every business function, there will be increasing numbers of people outside the (information systems organization) whose work involves IT,” Gartner said in the report, “and as IT skills become a more important component of business professionalism, in-house IS staff will be displaced.”

The report adds to somewhat confusing signals about the future of the IT profession. The U.S. Department of Labor forecasts that computer software engineering and network systems and data communications analysis will be among the top 10 fastest-growing occupations between 2002 and 2012.

And last fall, a Gartner analyst predicted a shortage of technology professionals in the United States in the near future, thanks to factors such as declining student interest in the tech field.

But a study in 2004 from research organization Rand did not find evidence that shortages of scientific, technical, engineering and mathematics personnel in the U.S. work force are on the horizon. And a separate Gartner analyst last year predicted that over the next 20 years, changes in computing technology will erase the need for much of the work that employs IT staff today.

In addition, the growing trend of shipping IT work offshore seems likely to harm U.S. techies in the form of fewer U.S. jobs created, at least in the short run. A report last year sponsored by the Information Technology Association of America trade group on offshore outsourcing of software and IT services indicated that sacrifices by American IT workers would result in an improved U.S. economy overall.

In its latest report, Gartner forecasts increased involvement by IT staffers in business matters. By 2010, the firm said, 60 percent of the people affiliated with the information systems group will assume “business-facing roles around information, process and relationships.” As a result, Gartner predicted, “the size of the IS organization will decrease, and…by 2010, IT departments in midsize and large companies will be at least one-third smaller than they were in 2000.”

“As we see departments within businesses taking on the traditional functions of IT, so IS professionals and leaders will have to choose between careers as technologists, technical managers and business professionals,” David Flint, research vice president at Gartner, said in a statement.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5722019.html

It opens up the floodgates for hackers to infiltrate phone conversations and steal confidential data. And spammers can target the system with massive denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

· Two-thirds of the Global 2000 are expected to implement VoIP by 2006, according to Deloitte Services LP (eWEEK, December 4, 2004).

· In a survey of 500 IT professionals released earlier this year, the Computing Technology Industry Association found that 73 percent of the respondents said they use or plan to use convergence hardware and software over the next 12 months (“Voice-over-IP Offers Greatest Productivity Gains,” February 9, 2005).

· Gartner Inc. expects the market for VoIP services to continue to expand at double-digit rates in 2005 (“North American Business VoIP Services Emerging,” March, 2004).

As the recently formed VoIP Security Alliance has observed, advances in information technology typically outpace the corresponding security requirements, which are often tackled only after these technologies are widely deployed. Such is the case with VoIP today.

Now that VoIP deployments are becoming more widespread, the technology is proving a more attractive target for hackers, increasing the potential for harm from cyberattacks. Moreover, the emergence of VoIP application-level attacks will likely occur as attackers become more familiar with the technology through exposure and easy access. And the consequences of an attack can be staggering. Successful attacks against a combined voice and data network can cripple an enterprise, halt communications required for productivity, and result in irate customers, lost revenue, and brand impairment.

That’s why the VoIP Security Alliance plans to disseminate knowledge of VoIP security risks through discussion lists, white papers, and research projects. The group hopes to spur adoption of VoIP by promoting best practices for companies that adopt the technology, and by warning organizations of threats to VoIP, including spam and DOS attacks.

With enterprise interest in VoIP heating up, Gartner has found that CIOs and network managers are acutely concerned about securing VoIP, so that it provides the same level of security as traditional time division multiplexing (TDM) devices and the public switched telephone network (PSTN). In a recent report (“Voice Over IP Communications Must Be Secured,” November, 2004), Gartner predicts that IP communications will continue to be less secure than TDM communications through 2006; that DoS attacks will regularly be used to disrupt VoIP communications by 2008; and that the next year will see convergence-specific viruses/worms begin to attack VoIP-specific equipment.

Issues include surrounding guaranteed bandwidth, delay, jitter, packet loss, and the timely delivery of signaling messages. It would be easy to use a combination of traditional IP security techniques, payload and signaling encryption. The holdup is that each company must justify the costs of a convergence project and judge whether the potential productivity enhancements and cost savings outweigh the costs of ripping out working telecom gear.

http://www.ebcvg.com/articles.php?id=697

“As specialist insurance becomes more affordable, I expect the take up to increase,” said Oliver Brew, a technology underwriter for London-based Hiscox Plc.

Because of vaguely worded state and federal regulations and the impossibility of 100% network security, a new type of insurance claim is emerging — one that protects insured enterprises against privacy-related lawsuits under provisions of the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act, California State Bill 1386 and other regulations.

“We are seeing breach of privacy claims due to unauthorized access to or use of personal identifiable information,” said Peter Foster, senior vice president and co-leader of the information risk management practice at Marsh Inc., a leading risk and insurance services firm. “Regulatory requirements to publish the breach incident are triggering multi-party lawsuits that have cost insurers excess of $1 million per incident in some cases.”

Cyberinsurance covers a number of other areas often not available in traditional business policies, including denial-of-service attacks, damage cased by hackers, malicious insiders, worms and viruses, and electronic theft of confidential information.

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid14_gci1084419,00.html

Wi-Fi market will continue to grow as the number of hot spots proliferate, and the emerging WiMAX equipment market would also add to growth over the next few years.

TIA expects revenues from spending on Wi-Fi/WiMAX capital expenditures in the US to hit an estimated $22.3 bln in 2005, rising to $29.3 bln by 2008, a compound annual gain of 7.1%. Spending on support services for wireless infrastructure like professional services, depot repair and logistics increased by 13.6% in 2004, up from the 31.8% drop in 2003. Spending on Wi-Fi services in the US reached $21 mln in 2004 and the TIA expected this to increase to $45 mln in 2005 rising at 99.9% CAGR to us$335 mln by 2008. Spending on Wi-Fi equipment in the US in 2004 increased by 31.8% to $4.35 bln.

By 2008 the TIA expects spending on Wi-Fi infrastructure equipment to total $7 bln in 2008, a 12.6% compound annual increase. The TIA expects the number of Wi-Fi hotspots to rise from 32,800 this year to 64,200 in 2008, rising at 31.5% CAGR. The TIA said it expected spending on WiMAX infrastructure in the US to increase dramatically over the coming few years, growing 666.7% from $15 mln in 2004 to $115 mln in 2005, then rising further to $290 mln by 2008, growing at 109.7% CAGR.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/index.php?p=1079