Cloud computing growth determines 2013 security trends

At this time of year there are many predictions about the new year, and when it comes to IT security, Gartner analysts predict that 2013 will be about the expansion of cloud computing and the security of companies working to ensure cloud computing.

According to Gartner analyst Ruggero Contu, Lawrence Pingree and Eric Ahlm, "the growing popularity of cloud computing will affect the way companies deploy security, while allowing key government agencies to prioritize the security of public cloud infrastructure." ”

Gartner predicts that by 2015, 10% of the IT Security enterprise features will be delivered through cloud computing, with the current focus on communication, web security, and remote vulnerability assessments. However, more technology is expected to support the maturing development of cloud computing, such as data loss protection, encryption, authentication, and so on.

Gartner predicts that accelerated changes in cloud computing security could "threaten" traditional business relationships between IT security providers and their value-added distributors. But the overall trend will drive more hosting security service providers to use cloud delivery. In addition, Gartner predicts that there will be many merger and acquisition activities related to cloud security throughout the 2013.

The federal government is implementing the so-called FedRAMP program to accommodate the deployment of external federal cloud services, which will also increase the utilization of the cloud services by federal agencies. Gartner predicts that by 2016 the public cloud infrastructure would be the subject of "key National infrastructure regulations".

Gartner points out that the disadvantage of increasing numbers of people using cloud computing is service availability, and over the past few years we've seen a variety of service outages that could have a "waterfall" effect on thousands of businesses.

Gartner's prediction of IT security is not just about cloud computing and IT security. Network virtualization is in the midst of ongoing transformation, and Gartner predicts that by 2015, 20% of the VPN firewall market will be deployed as a hypervisor, rather than as a physical security device.

"VMware's Edge firewalls will expand the virtual Switch firewall to places outside the data center," Gartner's 2013 forecast predicts, "so far, the virtual firewall market has been limited to the data-centric firewall, which is only a small part of the overall firewall market." Virtual vendors bringing their technology to the edge will be a key driver of the growth of the virtual Switch market. ”

In fact, a bigger trend in the 2013 is that the IT security industry has no choice but to adapt to a constantly virtualized network, which means "partnering with the hypervisor vendor will be key to ensuring the security of virtual switches."