“Shadow IT creates a backdoor and it is a growing danger”
Published on : Monday 30-11--0001
What are the digital trends most likely to be seen in 2019?
In 2019, I see four distinct trends:
Trend one: Consumer technologies at the core of the Enterprise
IoT started on the consumer side with wearable devices. However, security was at the low end of consideration and passwords were embedded at the factory level, which meant that most IoT devices were not secured. While data leaks due to poor security on consumer IoT devices may not pose that much risk (consumers may not care if the number of steps they took in a day are leaked), once these devices make their way into the business and enterprise use cases that risk grows.
Trend two: The rise of Shadow IT
Shadow IT, where systems and solutions are built and used inside organisations without explicit organisational approval, is a growing digital risk in the region, and we will potentially see data breaches next year targeting organisations through this growing exposure surface. Smaller teams within the same organisation are doing things their own way. Craving more agility and faster delivery, they end up creating their own IT environment that is usually cloud-based and unmanaged by the IT infrastructure team and outside the scope of the risk and compliance teams. Shadow IT creates a backdoor and it is a growing danger.
Trend three: Continued growth of online Fraud
We live in a connected world with everything accessible with just a few taps. Phishing attacks not only enable online financial fraud but these sneaky threats chip away at our sense of security as they get better at mimicking legitimate links, messages, accounts, individuals and sites. RSA releases a fraud threat report every quarter and India ranked fourth on the list of Top 10 phishing target countries and second on the list of top 10 phishing hosting countries consistently through the year. Phishing will continue to be a major threat in the coming year and phishers will continue to innovate & improvise the attacks methods.
Trend four: The accelerated rate in cloud adoption
In the next year, cloud adoption will accelerate significantly, and organisations will have more confidence in the cloud overall. This will put pressure on regional organisations to keep themselves secure through the transition. This includes ensuring their identity and access management remains up to par, and that their risk programs expand to cover third party.
Rajnish Gupta is Regional Director – India & SAARC, RSA (a Dell Technologies company), and has been heading RSA India since September 2017. Gupta joined RSA in mid-2012 as enterprise sales head for RSA in the region. Before joining RSA in 2012, he was regional sales director for Symantec for over a year. With an industry career spanning over nearly three decades in different senior roles at security companies and global GSI, Gupta started his career as a Sales and Service Engineer with PCS Data General India Ltd in 1990.
(This interview is part of a series on Digital Trends in 2019)