Uncertain Future Adds to Security Concerns - Page 2

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Online attacks will go up

As these legal issues enmesh corporations, they will have to face increasing attacks from cybercriminals. Security vendor McAfee has warned that next year could be a very good year for online crime if the economic situation deteriorates.

"The local, state and federal governments, which are the largest depositories of data, will be under constant attack," Dunkelberger said. "Viruses aren't about infecting your computer any more, they are about trying to steal data."

The security solutions of the future will take a multi-faceted approach, combining access control with network and data access security and user access security. This will all be done automatically through policies, encryption and other defense measures such as data leak protection, Dunkelberger said.

"You want to find the problem, remediate it and make sure the policy is enforced automatically, all done seamlessly so your end users won't have to deal with the problem," Dunkelberger said.

Other points Dunkelberger made were that government monitoring worldwide will increase and that the incoming administration will revamp our security laws to take into account civil liberties and privacy.

"There's going to be this unhealthy tension between business and privacy on the one hand and governments looking for more data on people to combat terrorism on the other," he said. There is no telling how this will play out.

The incoming Obama administration will emphasize cyber security for national security and businesses, but will look at the levels of security businesses and individuals need from a constitutional standpoint, Dunkelberger said.

"Every indication we've had is that they've very concerned about what happened in the past eight years of people going in without judicial approval and raiding people's e-mail and listening to their voice communications."

Update corrects comments by Dunkelberger.