Six security predictions for 2016

Some thoughts from Scott Tyson, Director of Global Sales at email security firm, Mailprotector.

Big breaches – we will continue to see headline-grabbing data breaches hit the media. We have already seen evidence of this in 2015 and the trend will only continue. As well as being headline grabbing, companies will go on to suffer reputational damage and data breaches and security attacks will start to hit the bottom line.

Phishing isn’t going away – while more of us are aware of phishing scams today, they still represent big wins for cybercriminals. We will continue to see phishing emails in our in-box as the technology used by attackers gets even more sophisticated and attackers become more targeted and clever, increasingly using social engineering techniques, in their approach. Email security with built-in protection against phishing will be essential for smaller businesses.

Alliances, mergers and acquisitions – we have seen a lot of acquisitions in the security sector again this year, and this will be in evidence in 2016 as niche specialists, like those in encryption and identity management, will be scooped up by bigger vendors looking to add firepower to their security portfolios.

Data encryption is finally having its day – a niche technology that has been divisive when it comes to discussions about government snooping and surveillance, encryption technology will be even more crucial for securing data in the cloud in 2016.

SaaS security - even greater adoption of cloud from businesses will create demand for cloud-based security. IDC’s Futurescape for Security predicts that enterprises will be utilising security software as a service (SaaS) as a greater share of their security spending. By the end of 2015, 15% of all security will be delivered via SaaS or be hosted, and more than 33% by 2018 .

Partners come into their own with a services-led approach – this has been a year of change, with greater adoption of cloud and mobile technologies. As a result, we have seen resellers moving away from sales focused on margin per sale towards monthly recurring revenues models. Many are starting to realise that significant revenue will be driven by cloud-based offerings as opposed to hardware, and we will continue to see them develop MSP divisions or services-led business models to embrace these changes.

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