While 2011 was the year of Hacking, 2012 was the year of data breaches. Security will, therefore, take on a new avatar in 2013.

This change will be necessary as the threats are becoming more sophisticated. Evidence of criminals collaborating with rogue nation states, exchanging methodologies, buying and selling information, and even subcontracting their respective capabilities expands their collective reach and enhances their mutual learning curves.

With trends such as BYOD (bring your own device) on the rise, the threat landscape has widened. There is a critical skills shortage of security professionals and many organisations can’t keep up.

In an age where breaches are probable, if not inevitable, organisations are realising that static, and perimeter defences are ineffective against the evolving threat landscape. Only an intelligence-based model that is risk-oriented and situationally-aware can be resilient enough to minimise or eliminate the effects of attacks.

Hence, it is the responsibility of people in organisations from all verticals, industries and governments to move towards a newer intelligence-based security model.

A simple yet effective solution would be to use cloud-oriented security services to deal with the shortage in security skills while Big Data analytics to enable an intelligence-based security model.

(The writer is Country Manager – India & SAARC, RSA, the security arm of EMC)

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