Although the economic recovery is slow and long, initial signs of improvement has made large and small enterprises wonder alike what the future hold for companies and people in IT. The uneasiness and pessimism that has been plaguing the industry for the last few years is being replaced with a general sense of guarded optimism. Enterprises have opened their kitty and have started to invest in new technologies and business models to become leaner but more efficient. New M&A activity is providing companies with greater multiples than were possible just a year ago. The spotlight today has shifted from companies brooding over lack of economic stability to technology advances they are making.

Although the industry is yet to reach the level prior to the downturn, the last two years have shaped up to be a more positive and promising year for budgets and IT employees. As such, security will remain a hot issue and an area of increased focus for all companies that need to protect their proprietary, business-critical information.

Securing the Virtual World

The trend toward operating in a virtual environment will be led by business benefits and raise many new security and management challenges this year. If implementation tactics are not thought through and potential new exploits not considered, virtualization could become a technology lever that an attacker can easily abuse. Incidents such as thefts, replay attacks, and unauthorized access by the virtual machine (VM) administrators themselves will find their spot in the news.

To mitigate these incidents, organizations will need to thoroughly plan virtualization efforts and place significant emphasis on securing the infrastructure. Ultimately, advances in security technologies will afford the opportunity to automate many of the activities associated with deploying a virtual infrastructure and the applications that operate within it. Implementing the appropriate security controls in a virtual environment must account for the dynamic nature of virtual machines themselves while simultaneously overcompensating for the barrage of novel exploits that are sure to follow the new technology platform.