April 2016

[Commentary] High security is now the norm. The news that Facebook’s WhatsApp now supports encryption across all its apps is nothing short of seismic. There have always been those who were keen on using encrypted communications — politicians trying to avoid the gaze of their rivals and foreign spies, corporate executives trying to protect their trade secrets, activists trying to organize opposition to oppressive regimes and, yes, criminals trying to evade law enforcement. But, in the big picture, these are fringe cases. Before Edward Snowden told the world about the extent of state surveillance in 2013, few “normal” people were interested in adding heavy protections to their communications. Soon, over a billion of them will be using this facility without even trying. For privacy advocates, this marks an enormous victory that few would have predicted would come so soon after Snowden’s revelations.

Over the past couple years, cyberincidents reported by federal agencies have nearly doubled -- from about 41,000 in 2011 to more than 77,000 in 2015. Partly that’s because agencies are getting smarter about detecting threats, such as suspicious network activity or malware able to slip past traditional antivirus tools. But the annual scorecard tracking agencies’ compliance with the Federal Information Security Management Act shows some agencies are, in fact, backsliding when it comes to robust security measures. The following charts show how agencies have plugged long-festering critical vulnerabilities, which agencies are ponying up the most cash for IT security and some of the common threats faced across agencies.

Verizon released a report, titled "State of the Market: Internet of Things 2016". Researchers see five "macro" trends they say will cause the Internet of Things (IoT) to drive revenue growth for businesses through 2016 and beyond. The five key trends that researchers see driving IoT monetization include:
1) In 3 to 5 years, average consumers will experience a much higher level of automation in their daily lives thanks largely to the ability to engage with IoT applications through a more simplified interface.
2) Data monetization will become a required competency. Nearly 50 percent of businesses expect to be using more than 25 percent of their data over the next 2 to 3 years.
3) Changes in the regulatory landscape will continue to bring the right ecosystem partners together to help establish industry standards more quickly.
4) Network connectivity, low power devices and IoT platforms will democratize innovation by creating more tools for developers and enabling businesses to scale their IoT deployments from millions to billions of connections more cost-efficiently. 5G, the next-generation of wireless technology, not only promises to make autonomous solutions such as cars and robotics a reality, but will also usher in new categories of uses cases, such as virtual and augmented reality for IoT deployments.
5) Security experts are keeping up with the development of technology by looking to arising threat vectors – some old, some new – that will impact IoT deployments and ongoing operations.