He identified the following areas as being on the radars and agendas of CISOs worldwide, with some making it into the board room as important discussions.
- Virtualisation and the cloud: “This is a board room issue. 28% of organisations have a private cloud, and a further 30% plan one. In 2012, CIOs will virtualise 55% of production servers. The challenges associated with this trend include lack of skills in the security team, cost of new solutions and regulatory issues.”
- IT consumerisation: “This is also a board room issue. 30% of enterprises are implementing tablet computers and by 2013, we will see a 100% increase in smartphone usage. Companies are starting to embrace the idea of ‘bring your own PC to work’ and are asking Check Point to help secure these devices”.
- Consolidation and complexity in security: “51% of security professionals consider managing the complexity of security as their biggest challenge. There is a huge trend to converge and unify information security technologies which we all need to be doing”.
- Web 2.0 and social media: “42% of organisations are prepared to deal with web 2.0 risks in order to capitalise on business benefits”.
- Data security and data loss: “$7.2m is the average cost of a data breach in 2011. USBs and laptops, corporate email and web mail are the largest sources of data loss”.
- Threat landscape: “This can be broken down into two motives: Crime and profit, and Cyber-warfare and hacktivists. The biggest recent threats include stuxnet, operation aurora, and zeus zbot”.
- Governance, risk and compliance: “”Governance and compliance has the greatest influence on the information security programme for 60% of companies”.
- Cost-saving IT: “This is definitely a topic that makes it into the board room”.
- Green IT: “For 70% of companies, the main reason for ‘going green’ is cost savings”.
With the above challenges in mind, Check Point’s Vecchi presented a ‘to do’ list for Check Point Experience attendees, and presumably, the industry as a whole:
- Prevent loss of sensitive data
- Secure web 2.0
- Meet compliance requirements
- Secure mobile end points
- Protect against attacks
- Secure virtual/cloud environments
- Reduce IT security spending.
Vecchi concluded his presentation by assuring the audience that Check Point’s suite of products and software blades have “all of this covered”.