SiliconANGLE has been covering a number different perspectives from across the industry on cybersecurity predictions for 2014. With HP’s flagship annual event, HP Discover wrapping up this week from Barcelona, it only makes sense to bring in the point of view of one of the leading security services voices in the industry. HP’s Enterprise Security division boasts a unique worldwide business-level portfolio of experience, leadership and customers in the security field that is backed by HP’s rapidly evolving, cutting-edge technology lineup. Andrzej Kawalec is the CTO of HP Enterprise Security, he’s a veteran at SiliconANGLE and theCUBE, was a speaker at this year’s Discover event, and he shares some thoughts on 2014 and beyond in the world of security.

SiliconANGLE: What can we expect in 2014 in the world of security?

Andrzej Kawalec: You can count on a sustained increase in attacks across the board. Those threats like malware, DDoS, mobile exploits, there will be nothing that tails off whatsoever. You have these numerous attack vectors that will remain constant, but there’s also an increase in targeted attacks that is looming on the horizon. It’s a bit of a shift underneath, but the overall threat load will be higher than ever before. There’s also going to be more focus around cloud security. We’re going to see a gravitation to building a stronger cloud mechanism. There’s also a number of new regulatory pressures worldwide. This series of privacy regulations will be felt in 2014. I say that because when we talk to CIO’s and people everywhere, we’re seeing a massive uptick around sovereignty and privacy. That will drive a lot of things going forward, especially when it comes to global business and enterprise.

Another piece that will continue to be a huge challenge to businesses will be that ongoing wave of technologies that come into use. We’re well into the mobile movement and even past it already in places. 2014 will be the year of “internet of things”. That is something that will start to become much more real and it will open new realm of information sharing and infosec challenges will quickly follow. To respond, people will need to understand what their information assets are. Statistically, some 72% of organizations don’t have a handle on that information right now. That has to change this next year, there’s no choice. Prepared organizations will have not only an end-to-end security strategy, but they will have to come up with a great cybercrisis management response in place. That will be of the utmost importance.
The changes on the adversary side will make things interesting to say the least.

Throughout there are quite tangible examples everywhere such as these different cybermilitia, regional/sub-regional nations starting to operate against and in between each other and more cyber whistle blowing. The pressure on organizations, especially on the global scale is high already and it will be higher than it has ever been. The truth is that some organizations face being unprepared.

SA: Sounds like many challenges on the way. So where is the industry at with available technology and personnel in order to meet these challenges right now?

AK: We have some real gaps there, and there is not enough to go around. The industry is in a constant running to try and keep up. We’ve made some good strides however and parity with attackers in many ways. There’s been some trumping of attacker threats, a whole bunch of great zero-day research, we’ve gotten better standardized patches out there. There’s been massive improvements in threat detection, and dealing with APTs with improved detection methods and protocols. There is still that question however of certainly not having enough personnel. That’s the reason why our HP Services business is growing at 3 times the level of the market. Organizations are looking for help and few enterprises are able to retain the amount of capability that they need to respond to these threats. As we’ve seen in the Ponemon studies, there are some real big gaps to remediate.

Security intelligence was the big talk of the last year, but it will really start making a mark in this year ahead. The other thing that is very powerful and needs to take hold is information sharing in dealing with these threats. That means giving people confidence and tools to share this info and intelligence. We’re going to need to get away from individual chess pieces on the board, pure and simple. That means primary research, malware signatures, all that stuff is fine, but once you put it together and get that intelligence out there, that’s a game changer. Once that is done really well, then those gaps of technology and personnel start to fade in the big picture. That will be a measure of success because we can never have enough technology but having people and controls in place are absolutely required. You know, I always hear from people how they’re trying to get value out of technology. It comes back to integrating it into a plan, being proactive rather than reactive and then having the right people and systems to manage it all.

We’ll continue in a follow-up with Kawalec and he will discuss HP’s edge, the threats from mobile apps and the research that is going into better cybersecurity in 2014.