[BreachExchange] What Security Looks Like For Partners In 2017

[Audrey McNeil]

http://www.channeltimes.com/story/what-security-looks-
like-for-partners-in-2017/

The year 2016 saw an exponential growth in targeted and state sponsored
attacks. The ransomware attacks remained the top concern of IT leaders
throughout the year. Considering the complexity of threat landscape, many
companies are turning to partners for managed security services to handle
the challenging responsibility of mitigating cyber risks. Customers cannot
handle the security architecture in their respective organization on their
own. Similarly, vendors cannot target the specific industry segment without
the market insights and pain points of that particular organization.
Partners are the win win for both who can fill the gap in the security
lines. But to enable that they need to consider the following major trends
in the security domain in 2017.

Crime Crime Syndicates To Become Bigger

Cyber-crime syndicates are not only going to become bigger and organized,
but they are also going to be more sophisticated in their massive data
breach launches in 2017. Hence, it is inevitable for enterprises to match
the skills and ability of new age cyber criminals in order to counter their
attacks. Like CISOs and CIOs, it is also a big challenge for security
partners and managed security solution providers (MSSPs) to constantly keep
themselves updated and upgraded on the emerging technologies and new
concept in the security field.

Also, considering the scale and complexity of the current cyber security
landscape, partners would explore to collaborate with multiple security
vendors instead of being loyal to only one company in order to offer most
comprehensive package of security solutions to end customers.

Paradigm Shift In Channel IT Spending

Earlier, security used to constitute a very little share in the entire
budget of an enterprise. The security spending has substantially risen in
recent years as most of the enterprises today consider security a key
component of organizations’ IT infrastructure. This is beneficial for
partners as vendors will have a deeper engagement with partners in terms of
training and support.

Similarly, strong product portfolio and robust sales support will be most
critical aspects for channel partners in 2017. Vendors will not want to
loose on these two fronts because in a highly flooded security market,
partners handling large accounts and strategic firms always emphasis on the
products and vendor support.

Uptick In Data Recovery And Security

For many, cyber security is largely caters to perimeter security or simply
protecting the endpoints that transfer data. Today, data has emerged as the
most important asset of any organization. The surge in the ransomware
attacks in the last 2 years has outlined the importance of data backup and
recovery. Similarly, a robust disaster recovery plan is a must to safeguard
the critical data from any uncertain incidents.

According to the recent survey by Evolve IP MSPs could be instrumental in
planning and executing the DR plan in the organization. DRaaS is emerging
as a revenue generating field for channel partners and many MSPs are
already making their inroads in this space. Hence, partners having
expertise in the data management space are going to drive the data
management strategies of companies in a big way in 2017.

IoT Security To Become Mainstream

According to the MarketsandMarkets forecasts the Internet of Things market
size to grow from USD 157.05 Billion in 2016 to USD 661.74 Billion by 2021,
at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 33.3 percent. The latest report
by NASSCOM reveals that Indian IoT market is set to grow to USD 15 billion
by 2020 from the current USD 5.6 billion. With an exponential growth in
connected devices, Internet Of Things (IoT) will become mainstream in 2017.

Gartner too estimates there are 6.4 billion connected gadgets out there,
and each of those devices has the potential to generate volumes of DDoS
traffic. Hence, the rising DDoS and other kinds of attacks on IoT devices
will compel the CIOs to tighten security layers around the IoT ecosystem.
Partners are going to play a very significant role in big IoT automation
projects across the industry domain in 2017.

Cloud Migration To Rise

Enterprises across the verticals will be shifting their work loads on cloud
platforms in a big way in 2017 and Hybrid cloud and SaaS will be the fasted
growing segments in the cloud business. Partners will be seen busy in
facilitating a seamless migration of customers’ applications on the
suitable cloud platforms. While cloud makes it optimize the resources in a
best possible way and brings a higher level of efficiency in the business
operations, the biggest issues will still be security, management and
compliance.

Experts believe that partners can play a role of trusted advisers to
customers in the migration process. However, to enable that it is essential
to have a sufficient in-house skills and domain expertise. Partners will
require to their focus to micro components of cloud computing in order to
deliver higher value to their customers.

Cyber Security Aware To Become Critical

This year, we may see a significant uptick in the threat landscape,
increasing the security burden for many organizations. Insider threats will
continue to haunt organizations across the sectors. Hence, awareness will
be a key factor in tackling advanced and sophisticated cyber threats.
Partners are very proactive in educating end users on cyber security and
they will continue to leverage on digital technologies for customers
educations.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.riskbasedsecurity.com/pipermail/breachexchange/attachments/20170106/2fa79abb/attachment.html>