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Browsing Security Predictions for 2013
The period between November and December is particularly interesting for the Infosec community, since nearly all the main security vendors use to unveil their predictions for the next year, trying to anticipate the trends and the issues that will trouble the system administrators’ sleeps.
Exactly as I did last year, I analyzed the predictions of 7 vendors, choosing the ones that I consider particularly meaningful for the presence of the vendor in the market and for the coverage of their respective solution portfolio. In comparison with the last year, I was not able to find any prediction from Cisco (at least so far). However I was able to include the ones issued by Symantec, that were missing from my initial version. Hence the list of the vendors taken into consideration is the following:
Nearly all the analyzed vendors went through deep transformations during the past year, reflecting the changing trends in the market. Fortinet is considered a vendor focused on UTM Technologies, although it offers a wide portfolio of solutions ranging from endpoint to WAFs. After the acquisition of Astaro, Sophos is expanding its offering from the endpoints to the UTM segment. McAfee covers a wide area: historically focused on the endpoints, the long trail of acquisitions allows the company to be present in all the segments of the security market. Websense went through its historical flagship, the URL filtering, moving its security model to the endpoint. Symantec and Trend Micro have their foundation on the endpoints, but are more and more concentrated on securing the cloud. Kaspersky is still concentrated on the endpoints, although the company has been very active in the last year in the analysis of the cyberwar events, most of all in Middle East.
Yes, the rise of the malware on mobile platforms seems unstoppable, not only it reached unprecedented levels in 2012, but apparently it will be the protagonist even for 2013, at least for 5 vendors on 7. Indeed the vendors are 6 if one considers also the cross-platform malware which is equally a threat for mobile platforms. Furthermore one vendor (Fortinet), considers the role of mobile threats also as a threat vector for APTs in 2013.
Politically motivated attacks rank at number 2, even if with different connotations: Kaspersky and Websense mention explicitly state-sponsored attacks, while Symantec and Trend Micro include also attacks motivated by hacktivism in this category. It is not a coincidence that Kaspersky and Websense include Hacktivism into an explicit prediction.
It is also interesting to notice the ransomware at number 3 with just 3 preferences. Particularly interesting the indication of Sophos that speaks of “Irreversible” malware, since this class of threats is increasingly using encryption to make the compromised content unrecoverable.
The trend is even more visible from the distribution chart, that also emphasizes the role of the cloud, in the double shape of source and target of the cyber attacks.
Two vendors (McAfee and Trend Micro) include the proliferation of embedded systems (for instance Smart TV equipped with Android) as one of the main security issues for 2013. Honestly speaking I would have expected a major impact for this threat.
Last but not least, two vendors (Kaspersky and McAfee) believe that Targeted Attacks and Signed Malware will experience a major rise in 2013.
Browsing Security Predictions for 2012
Update 01/11/2012: Year-to-Tear comparison with 2011 Security Predictions
The new year has just come, vacations are over, and, as usually happens in this period, information security professionals use to wonder what the new year will bring them from an infosec perspective. The last year has been rich of events, whose echo is still resounding, and as a consequence, if RSA and Sony breach were not enough, the main (and somehow obvious) question is: will 2012 stop this trend or rather bring it to unprecedented levels, or, in other words, which threat vectors will disturb the (already troubled) administrators’ sleep?
Unfortunately my divination skills are not so developed (in that case I would not be here), but security firms can give a crucial help since they started to unveil their security predictions for 2012, at least since the half of December, so putting them together, and analyzing them is quite a straightforward and amusing task. Maybe even more amusing will be, in twelve years, to see if they were correct or not.
The security prediction that I take into consideration included, at my sole discretion (and in rigorous alphabetical order):
• Cisco;
• Fortinet;
• Kaspersky;
• McAfee;
• Sophos;
• Trend Micro;
• Websense;
That is the only leader vendors for which I found predictions issued with original documents (feel free to indicate if I missed someone and I will be very glad to include them in the chart).
In any case, the landscape is quite heterogeneous since it encompasses security vendors covering different areas: one vendor, McAfee, covering all the areas (network, endpoint and content security), two vendors and one half focused on network and content security (Cisco, Fortinet and partially Sophos thanks to the Astaro acquisition), and two vendors focused essentially on endpoint security (Kaspersky and Trend Micro).
The following table summarizes their predictions:
In order to correctly understand the chart a premise is needed: as you will probably have already noticed, in several cases the predictions reflect the specific security focus for the analyzed vendor. For instance, Websense is focused on DLP, and that is the reason why the adoption of DLP is one of its predictions. Analogously McAfee is investing huge resources for Security on Silicon, and this implies that embedded systems and Malware Moving Beyond OS are present among its predictions. Same speech could be applied for Trend Micro and its Cloud Prediction and so on.
Some trends for this year are clearly emphasized: easily predictable Hactivism appears on 6 of the 7 vendors, as mobile (with different connotations) does. Social Media is on the spot as well as are SCADA, Embedded Systems and, quite surprisingly in my opinion, cloud. I would have expected a greater impact for APTs, but for a complete and more accurate analysis one should consider them together with threats targeting embedded systems or ICS. Even because according to several security firms, for instance Kasperky, APT Stuxnet-like will be used for tailored campaigns, whilst more “general purpose malware”, including botnets will be used for massive campaigns (this item is summarized as Mass Targeted Campaigns).
Some “old acquaintances” will be with us in 2012: consumerization, at least according to Sophos and Trend Micro (even if consumerization is strictly connected, if not overlapped with mobile) and, if the Comodo and Diginotar affaires were not enough, Rogue Certificates, according to McAfee. Instead some “new entries” are absolutely interesting, such as the threats related to NFC (even if in this case I would have expected a greater impact) or related to Virtual Currency. Besides let us hope that the prediction to adopt DNSSEC be more than a prediction but a consolidated practice.
The most conservative security firm? In my opinion Cisco. The most “visionary”? Maybe Fortinet, I found the “Crime as a Service (CaaS)” absolutely awesome, and most of all not so visionary, since there are already some (even if clumsy) attempts.
In any case with this plenty of Cyber Nightmares is not a surprise the fact the Enterprise security market is going to reach $23 billion worldwide in 2012 with a 8.7% growth year-on-year.
Some Random Thoughts On The Security Market
The intention by UK-headquartered company Sophos to acquire Astaro, the privately-held security company co-headquartered in Karlsruhe, Germany and Wilmington, Massachusetts (USA) is simply the last effect of the process of vendor consolidation acting in the information security market. It is also the trigger for some random thoughts…
In the last two years a profound transformation of the market is in place, which has seen the birth (and subsequent growth) of several giants security vendors, which has been capable of gathering under their protective wings the different areas of information security.
The security model is rapidly converging toward a framework which tends to collect under a unified management function, the different domains of information security, which according to my personal end-to-end model, mat be summarized as follows: Endpoint Security, Network Security, Application Security, Identity & Access Management.
- Endpoint Security including the functions of Antivirus, Personal Firewall/Network Access Control, Host IPS, DLP, Encryption. This component of the model is rapidly converging toward a single concept of endpoint including alle the types of devices: server, desktop, laptop & mobile;
- Network & Contente Security including the functions of Firewall, IPS, Web and Email Protection;
- Application Security including areas of WEB/XML/Database Firewall and (why not) proactive code analysis;
- Compliance: including the functions of assessment e verification of devce and applications security posture;
- Identity & Access Management including the functions of authentication and secure data access;
- Management including the capability to manage from a single location, with an RBAC model, all the above quoted domains.
All the major players are moving quickly toward such a unified model, starting from their traditional battlefield: some vendors, such as McAfee and Symantec, initiallty moved from the endpoint domain which is their traditional strong point. Other vendors, such as Checkpoint, Fortinet, Cisco and Juniper moved from the network filling directly with their technology, or also by mean of dedicated acquisitions or tailored strategic alliances, all the domains of the model. A further third category is composed by the “generalist” vendors which were not initially focused on Information Security, but became focused by mean of specific acquisition. This is the case of HP, IBM and Microsoft (in rigorous alphabetical order) which come from a different technological culture but are trying to become key players by mean of strategic acquisitions.
It is clear that in similar complicated market the position and the role of the smaller, vertical, players is becoming harder and harder. They may “hope” to become prey of “bigger fishes” or just to make themselves acquisitions in order to reach the “critical mass” necessary to survive.
In this scenario should be viewed the acquisition of Astaro by Sophos: from a strategical perspective Sophos resides permanently among the leaders inside the Gartner Magic quadrant but two of three companions (Symantec and Mcafee, the third is Trend Micro) are rapidly expanding toward the other domains (meanwhile McAfee has been acquired by Intel). In any case all the competitors have a significant major size if compared with Sophos, which reflects in revenues, which in FY 2010 were respectively 6.05, 2.06 and 1.04 B$, pretty much bigger than Sophos, whose revenues in FY 2010 were approximately 260 M$, about one fourth of the smaller between the three above (Trend Micro which is, like Sophos, a privately-owned company).
In perspective the acquisition may be also more appealing and interesting for Astaro, which is considered one of the most visionary players in the UTM arena with a primary role in the European market. Its position with respect to the competition is also more complicated since the main competitors are firms such as Fortinet, Check Point and Sonicwall which all have much greater size (as an example Checkpoint revenues were about 1.13 B $ in FY 2010 which sound impressive if compared with the 56 M $ made by Astaro in the Same Fiscal Year).
In this scenario, the combined company aims to head for $500 million in 2012.
Last but not least both companies are based in Europe (respectively in England and Germany) and could rely on an US Headquarter in Massachusetts.
From a technological perspective, the two vendors are complementary, and the strategy of the acquisition is well summarized by the following phrase contained in the Acquisition FAQ:
Our strategy is to provide complete data and threat protection for IT, regardless of device type, user location, or network boundaries. Today, we [Sophos] offer solutions for endpoint security, data protection, and email and web security gateways. The combination of Sophos and Astaro can deliver a next generation set of endpoint and network security solutions to better meet growing customer needs […]. With the addition of Astaro’s network security, we will be the first provider to deliver truly coordinated threat protection, data protection and policy from any endpoint to any network boundary.
Sophos lacks of a network security solution in its portfolio, and the technology from Astaro could easily fill the gap. On the other hand, Astaro does not own an home-built antivirus technology for its products (so far it uses ClamAV and Avira engines to offer a double layer of protection), and the adoption of Sophos technologies (considered one of the best OEM Antivirus engine) could be ideal for its portfolio of UTM solutsions.
Moreover the two technologies fit well among themselves to build an end-to-end security model: as a matter of fact Information security is breaking the boundary between endpoint and network (as the threats already did). Being obliged to adapt themselves to the new blended threats, which often uses old traditional methods to exploit 0-day vulnerabilities on the Endpoint, some technologies like Intrusion prevention, DLP and Network Access Control, are typically cross among different elements of the infrastructure, and this explains the rush of several players (as Sophos did in this circumstance) to enrich their security portfolio with solutions capable of covering all the information Security Domains.
Just to have an idea, try to have a look to some acquisitions made by the main security players in the last years (sorry for the Italian comments). Meanwghile the other lonely dancers (that is the companies currently facing the market on their own), are advised…
Related articles
- Sophos to acquire Astaro – some reactions (nakedsecurity.sophos.com)
- Sophos Acquires Internet Security Appliance Maker Astaro (techcrunch.com)
- Application Security: What’s Next? (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
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08/13/2011 - My Post on Android Malware Mentioned on Engadget.
04/14/2011 - The Article Smart Grid: L'ultima Frontiera del Cybercrime published on ICT Security Magazine May 2011.
03/14/2011 - Security Summit 2011: Paolo Passeri guest at Round Table "Mobile Security: Rischi, Tecnologie, Mercato"
02/14/2011 - The Article Gears of Cyberwar published on ICT Security Magazine January 2011.
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