2014: More Secure Access, Please

Are you back from holiday break all refreshed and ready to embrace 2014 with confidence?

Many organizations will see new devices on their networks given the recent massive holiday gift giving. In particular, educational organizations will be morst likely to be impacted. It seems there was no new hot toy (must-have gift) noted this year because kids want electronics. A recent survey indicated that 88% of kids ages 12 to 17 said that they most wanted a gadget as a holiday gift, with the majority (69%) requesting some kind of Apple device.

Students are returning to school with their shiny new electronic mobile devices and no hesitation to access the resources at school. Educational institutions continue to strive to enable users, while minimizing potential risk, and security continues to be the top concern.

Consider this:

Secure Mobility in Higher Education

Secure Mobility in K-12 Education

The challenge of secure mobility will persist as the device storm continues. 2014 opens with the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, January 7-10. The last couple years the show highlighted latest smart phones and tablets. It seems this year a heavy focus on the Internet of Things—with sensor-based devices that feed information to a computer over the Internet, further emphasizing the Any to Any problem, which changes the security paradigm. Any user on any device increasingly going over any type of connection, to any application, that could be running in any data center and on any cloud. Regardless of how or where our users are connecting, we have to provide the right levels of inspection and protection against malicious intruders who may steal sensitive data or disrupt business. Let’s start to think and be prepared for what organizations may see coming on their networks and what the security implications may be for next year.

Happy 2014!