IT Security Trends From McAfee CEO

At an Information Week conference in Tucson last week, McAfee CEO David DeWalt said that cybercrime was a bigger business than drug dealing. His comments created a buzz on IT security message boards, but he did make some interesting points worth noting, nonetheless, about industry trends.

1. The security industry is undergoing consolidation with big players taking over smaller ones.
2. Compliance requirements have grown in response to the increase in cyberthreats.
3. Security protection is moving from the perimeter, or the network, to the data layer itself. (See this article for some fascinating details.)
4. Virtualization with the use of Virtual Machines (VM) is creating new security risks in the form of subverted VMs. (Here's an unrelated article on VM security.)
5. New devices were challenging security with new platforms of attack for hackers.