Predictions 2015: Data Security And Privacy Are Competitive Differentiators

Love him or hate him, Edward Snowden’s revelations of widespread National Security Agency (NSA) government surveillance triggered an international discussion and debate on privacy. Suddenly, the European Union (EU) was threatening to scrap the Safe Harbor Agreement, enterprises shelved their plans to adopt cloud services from US-based providers, and tech giants like Apple and Google found it necessary to steadfastly deny any claims that they gave the NSA backdoor access to their customers’ data. Eager to prove its privacy bona fides to customers around the world, and much to the dismay of the FBI, Apple now encrypts messages, mail, calendar, contacts, and photos in iOS 8 by default. This reignition of privacy rights, together with increasing cyberattacks and the ongoing deperimeterization of the digital enterprise, has forced security and risk (S&R) pros to move more and more protections closer to the data itself. It also demonstrates that in the battle to win, serve, and retain customers, data security and privacy have become competitive differentiators and, thus, a top business technology agenda item. In this report, we provide S&R pros with analysis and recommendations regarding our nine predictions for data security and privacy.