Bangalore: The year gone by featured seemingly continuous attempts of hacking, spear-phishing and malware attacks that successfully managed to exploit reputed businesses which included Sony and RSA.Two of the biggest computing trends Cloud services and Mobile internet that gained exponential momentum in 2011 have also brought along some major security issues that the internet has faced till date. 

Cloud services and Mobile internet undoubtedly offer us efficient services, provide maximum flexibility and help us with easy access to information but the fact that they have has also increased our vulnerability cannot be ignored. The data breaches of businesses in past year had a major impact on companies as huge amount of critical records were exposed; Rowan Puttergill in his article to memeburn.com speaks about the recent security trends and what they portend for the coming year.

Mobile Security                                     

In todays world everybody around uses a Cell phone and mobile computing seems to be abuzz, most of us take advantage of this mobile platform and unsurprisingly hackers, crackers and hijackers are all eyeing this platform.  In 2012, a good number of Android security threats have been exposed and these android vulnerabilities have picked up pace from past few months. Due to the numerous features hosted on Android platform,  numerous security flaws have come up as explained by the security experts.  The year ahead will see more of malicious attacts on Andriod and iOS platforms. Mobile payment system and devices constantly being connected to social networking sites like twitter, facebook and Google + would provide wealth of identity information to hackers and fraudsters. Security of these devices is likely to be the hot topic in 2012.

Social Networking

This could probably be old but cannot be ignored with Zuckeberg’s personal photo archive now freely available on the internet and spreading with a boom you could take a guess where the security is headed. The social networking sites are the major source of personal identity storage with millions of users presuming their identity to be secure. But, this could very well serve as a bank for hackers to withdraw identities of people. Intrestingly hacker groups like Anonymous and lulzSec  use the networking sites to promote and coordinate their efforts instead of the traditional way of using secret chat rooms or darknets. In the past year government has taken measures to control these networks and gain access to their content but still security threats is likely to increase in this year.