2015 will be the year of the smart watch, with compelling offerings arriving on both the Apple and Android platforms. But we will also see popular consumer mobile applications creating huge security issues for the enterprise, with major security breaches happening due to human error. This is all according to Nicko van Someren, CTO of Good Technology, a provider of secure mobility software.

van Someren’s predictions about emerging technologies are all part of our second annual Technology Predictions series in which industry experts share their predictions with us about the hot tech trends that they think will take center stage in 2015. We’ll be sharing all of their predictions with you over the next several days. Read on for more from van Someren.

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Prediction No. 1: Human error will lead to more major security breaches

Cyber-attacks are getting more sophisticated and complex. This will continue in 2015 but it appears that many companies are not moving fast enough to keep up and the likely result will be major security breaches. The biggest contributing factor to these security risks will be human error and lack of awareness.

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Prediction No. 2: Consumer technologies will cause security issues for enterprises

Consumer technology will also be a big concern in 2015. Consumer devices and consumer-centric technologies act as a gateway for corporate data to move between controlled, corporate environments and parts unknown. Modern consumer devices are inherently prone to leaks by design because they are built to explicitly make it easy for users to share data. Popular consumer mobile applications can easily move data outside of corporate controls without the user knowing, creating huge security issues for the enterprise.

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Prediction No. 3: 2015 will be the year of the smart watch

2015 will be the year of the smart watch, with compelling offerings arriving on both the Apple and Android platforms. The emergence of new technology will result in the emergence of new security threats and vulnerabilities, putting users’ data at risk. We don’t yet know how hard it will be to break into these devices but we do know that, if hackers can infiltrate your smart watch, then they can potentially make transactions from Apple Pay and, possibly, reach back into the database on your smartphone to capture all sorts of sensitive information.

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Prediction No. 4: Wearables will cause data breaches in the enterprise

As of now, wearables are mainly consumer-driven. Their arrival in the workplace in 2015 is certain but most businesses are woefully unprepared for this. Unless businesses move swiftly to limit how corporate data is delivered to and consumed on these devices, some sort of data breach is inevitable.

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2015 Technology Predictions graphic courtesy of SiliconANGLE