Technology Trends #6 - Information Security

Technology Trends #6 - Information Security

The sixth post in the series on Technology Trends examines how as large swathes of the world's data moves online, individuals and organizations move to protect that data


  1. As more data moves online, organizations and individuals struggle to maintain effective security of that information as hackers find increased rewards for their efforts

  2. Enterprises will adopt multi-level security practices that lockdown their systems in an effort to protect not only the data held, but also data transactions up and down their value chains

  3. The number of personal data transactions will increase dramatically as person-to-person and person-to-business transactions move online creating new risk at both ends of the transaction and along the transaction path itself

  4. Digital Rights Management, Sophisticated Document Tracking, Strong Encryption and Biometric Authentication will all be employed in an effort to reduce risk

  5. Accreditation of information hubs, resellers and data transmission parties will be required prior to adding them into any network. Dynamic validation of a party’s security systems will take place prior to any transaction

  6. The Personal Data Store, a virtual distributed repository of personal information will be adopted by individuals keen to store, protect and leverage their personal data in P2P and C2B transactions. The personal data store will become akin to a bank account, but for data and the data within will act as a currency (personal preference data will have value to marketers and through such a store will be controlled by the individual rather than the marketer)

  7. Simple hacking will graduate to acts of data terrorism where whole organizations, international processes and even states can be incapacitated and held to ransom. Simple back-up. failover and recovery systems will need to be re-invented

Worth Reading


Scan of Internet Uncovers Thousands of Vulnerable Embedded Devices by Kim Zetter at Wired Magazine (Oct 2009)
Notes from the BlackHat Conference by Kim Zetter at Wired Magazine at (Oct 2009)
Tracking Devious Phishing Websites by Erica Naone at MIT Technology Review(Oct 2009)

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Next post: Trend #7 - Scuba Diving the Web

Gam Dias is Principal at First Retail Inc. and was previously VP of Product Management and Research at Overtone Inc. and Director of Product Management at Hyperion Solutions and Brio Software. Co-Authors of this article are: Simon Handley, Tim Mueller Eric Scott and Kryztof Urban