2012 has been a tumultuous year as far as enterprise security is concerned with a number of new and more sophisticated vulnerabilities arising, impacting individuals, businesses and governments.

CMR expects 2013 to be a year where security stakes will reach new heights, attacks become more frequent, and unfortunately, more damaging as many organizations will suffer attacks before being able to take measures to protect themselves from the ‘bad guys’.

The following list reveals an uptick in emerging cyber threats:

• Cloud Computing @ risk at end points: CMR expects to see an increase in attacks against end-users who either access or control cloud-based services. Much of the focus is on the security of the cloud itself, but very often end-users are left on their own, while connecting from less secure public networks.
• Security breaches on account of BYOD: With the continued development and proliferation of mobile devices (smartphones, tablet computers, etc.), CMR predicts a rise in security breaches resulting from the credentials for those accounts being stored on unsecured devices.
• Social Media Security Scare: With social media already being an itegral part of our lives, it has infiltrated even the depths of our businesses and organizations. Data loss prevention controls, firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, and the like will need to become more application aware in 2013, in order to allow organizations to continue to use social media from a business perspective.
• Hacktivism going mainstream: In the past, financial gain served as the primary motivation behind cybercrime, but today days there are increasing groups of hackers with other motivations which are guided by economic, political, or religious interests. CMR expects to see this trend continue into 2013.
• Tighter security controls in Virtualized Environments: Virtualization is no longer a new technology. Like with other emerging technologies, as virtualization matures, its usage increases among organizations. Many IT professionals still don’t grasp the potential security ramifications of poorly implemented virtual environments. Because of which risk of data loss dramatically increases. CMR expects to see a considerable rise in interest for virtualization security due to increased reliance on this technology in corporate environments.
• Data theft and loss: In recent years, an increasing number of high-profile data security breaches have taken place. These events can not only expose a business to costly and devastating legal ramifications, they can also severely denigrate a brand’s image and reputation. With consumers and regulators demanding more control over sensitive data, CMR feels protecting a company’s customer data, core intellectual property, trade secrets, and regulated data is going to be high on priority of most enterprise CIOs and IT heads.