Security Track at Cloud Computing Expo

A couple of recent surveys reveal that for 2010, Security is back at the top of IT’s focus. 

It seemed for a while there that Cloud Computing was starring in most questionnaires that asked about future IT spending plans.  If you remember, Security was still riding shot-gun slamming on the imaginary brakes in the passenger seat.  ‘Hey Cloud, You still can’t turn down that alley without my presence,’ Security would constantly nag from the navigator position.  Don’t get me wrong, Cloud Computing is still a powerful IT resource but according to a recent Infonetics survey,

‘Security upgrades, both for IT security and physical security, was the #1 change named by respondent organizations when asked what major changes they planned for their data centers over the next two years……For those who are expecting ‘the cloud’ to be a savior of the IT industry, our study is a bit of a reality check: while there is some interest in cloud-based services, particularly on the software side, the majority of respondents have no concrete plans for it. Virtualization is the more important trend and technology, as it is a critical tool for organizations to make their infrastructure more efficient and manageable,” advises Matthias Machowinski.’

It’s not that Security ever took a back seat, it’s just many enterprises had to take a hard look, investigate new options and make difficult decisions over the last year on where to invest IT resources.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like crooks ever need to get budget approval and continued their daily system onslaught.  While credit cards and SSNs are still top targets, stealing Carbon Credits is the new bounty for the criminal element.  Were they just being eco-friendly?  Not in the least.  The 250,000 carbon credit permits that were taken are worth more than $4 million and was resold, probably to an unsuspecting buyer.

The Enterprise Strategy Group also released a Research Brief on the 2010 Networking Spending Trends and here too, Security took top prize.

Health care, financial services and federal government all indicated that they will be spending more on network hardware with 82% of financial services organizations saying they will increase network hardware spending in 2010.  What is also interesting about the ESG survey is of the Education respondents, only 38% will be increasing Network Security spending but 70% of them will be investing in Wireless LAN equipment.  To me, securing your WLAN should be part of the overall Network Security plan.  Hopefully folks remember that when all those SSID’s suddenly start broadcasting.

Security is something we strive for in many areas of our lives and at least on the corporate IT front, it looks to be a major area of focus this year.

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