It looks like 2017 will be a great year for Internet of things industry. 451 Research's new report says that almost three quarters of all businesses worldwide, 71 percent of them to be exact, are gathering IoT data today.

The report is based on a survey of 1,000 organizations, scattered all over the globe. The best part about this figure is that it represents a three percent jump compared to its last report, which was released a quarter ago.

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A new report from IT research and consulting company Osterman Research reveals that employee turnover and attrition is the number one data protection concern for enterprises.

Of the organizations surveyed, 69 percent indicate that they have suffered significant data or knowledge loss resulting from employees who had left the business.

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Those rare companies that decide to engage in hand-coding do it either because they lack the required information (they simply don't know there are packaged solutions out there) or, frankly, in my opinion, they are chasing a pipe dream. They often mistakenly believe that all a big data project takes is to feed data into a Hadoop cluster. They figure developing a dedicated on-premises infrastructure to feed and analyze big data will mean a 20 percent savings over a packaged solution.

However, according to Gartner, this approach results in a 200 percent increase in maintenance costs. And that's not all. Our past ten years’ experience in several integration projects, now in production, offers us the insight into the limits of a custom-coded approach. In reality, by developing in-house, companies expose themselves to three types of risks: operational, strategic, and economic.

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The reign of the cloud has begun. Employing a strong cloud strategy has escalated from being a luxury to a must have for the enterprise. Meanwhile, as companies around the world struggle with their digital transformation efforts, Bimodal IT has become the new norm, for good or bad. I anticipate we’ll see companies look to take their cloud strategies to the next level in an effort to bridge the divide between the two modes of IT in 2017.

They’ll do that through the use of hybrid approaches including the expansion of private cloud usage and new solutions that facilitate legacy application modernization. Here’s how I see those predictions playing out this year.

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Already an attractive option for a variety of consumer applications, crowd sourcing is now catching on in the corporate world. One emerging area of crowd sourcing is bug bounty programs. These are rewards offered by organizations to security researchers or whitehat hackers, who receive recognition and financial compensation for finding and reporting bugs, exploits and vulnerabilities in the organizations’ websites and applications.

As a technology company or security professional, it’s easy to see the attraction of running bug bounty programs. But these programs are not without risk, and timing can be a critical factor. Unless they are managed carefully, bug bounty programs can come with serious consequences for your overall security posture.

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They’re calling 2016 "the year of the chatbot". From diverse sectors such as dining, travel and retail, chatbots are increasingly being used for a variety of different purposes. This is part of a broad shift away from point-and-click based apps to chat-based user interfaces. Software development is no exception to this trend -- GitHub is credited with coining the term "ChatOps" back in 2013 when it created Hubot, its open source chatbot to help with DevOps practices.

Initially designed as an integration with messaging apps such as Campfire, Hubot has since been starred over 11,000 times on GitHub, and a variety of companies, from Box to Lyft have begun embedding them in their own development workflows.

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The use of mobile devices continues to increase, with there being no sign of it slowing down anytime soon. The use of mobile apps is also increasing and is completely dominating mobile internet usage, so it’s no surprise that enterprises are investing in mobile apps in order to boost the impact of their product or service.

The most dominant channel through which to download consumer apps is through stores such as Apple’s iTunes and Google’s Play Store, as well as some third-party marketplaces. A large corporate organization will need to ensure that all information placed within their mobile app is secure. Whether the app is for internal employee use alone, or will be shared with customers, security must be the top priority.

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Today businesses are working in more agile and digitally connected ways. What’s more in the case of new software development projects, DevOps is a buzzword that chimes with this sentiment. But what does it mean and how should we view it? Is it a job role? Is it a team? A product? A vision?

Quite simply, DevOps is a mind-set. When companies choose to expand development across the organization they are driving collaboration. This adds powerful value back to enterprise leaders, who have the interests of the customer at heart. What makes it a mind-set is that its success depends on a combination of people and behavior changes.

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An impressive and user-friendly digital presence is an indispensable asset to any brand. It is often the first point of contact for customers who expect and demand great functionality and engaging content across multiple platforms. The finding that nearly half of us won't wait even three seconds for a website to load bears witness to ever increasing customer expectations which must be met.

Partnership with a digital agency can be a great way to keep up to speed with rapid change and innovation, but, to ensure the very best outcome, both client and agency need to find an optimum commercial, creative and secure cultural fit. This should be a priority for both sides from the very first pitch. The promise of exceptional creativity and customer experience is one thing, but considering the more practical aspects of how the relationship will work is entirely another.

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Threat intelligence is a popular topic in security circles these days. Many organizations are now using a threat feed that comes bundled with some other security product, such as McAfee’s GTI or IBM’s X-Force feeds. Lots of products, notably SIEMs, have added support for some sort of integration with specific threat intelligence feeds or more generic imports via STIX/TAXII. With many now hoping to take advantage of the large number of open source and free intelligence feeds available. Some are even investing in commercial intelligence feeds.

However, as many organizations quickly discover, without effective management of the threat intelligence lifecycle, making effective use of this valuable information is nearly impossible. Today, an organization has two choices for managing threat intelligence, these are to deploy a threat intelligence management platform, or a manual in-house management program. The steps required to set up a manual threat intelligence lifecycle program will be outlined below for those who prefer this approach.

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Compliance with requirements and regulations is an ongoing challenge for businesses. In the cyber security space, the threat environment is constantly changing, and organizations have to meet some 500-600 different regulations and laws, as Internet of Things (IoT) devices proliferate and new, massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are seen on a near-daily basis. As technology continues to evolve with such innovations as cloud computing and Big Data, security professionals are on a never-ending quest to stay up to speed on security controls and best practices.

It’s no secret that cyber security issues have increased in prominence and seriousness over the past several years. Starting with the infamous Target data breach, organizations are becoming more and more aware of potential risks they face as well as becoming more quick to adapt to changing risks, regulations, laws and situations. As we’ve seen regulatory changes happen almost overnight, it has become essential for organizations to have a reliable process for ensuring their compliance management is up to speed, as well as a system of checks and balances to prove it. For companies, especially those operating in highly regulated industries such as finance and healthcare, the challenge to stay up to date is even more paramount.

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Security has never been a more pressing issue for businesses than it is now. Mobile working, the proliferation of increasingly sophisticated, connected devices, and the growing number of applications relied upon by the modern enterprise all represent potential risks that weren’t apparent in generations past.

There is a growing fear about the level of damage that cyberattacks could bring, so much so that the United Kingdom has launched a £1.9bn National Cyber Security Strategy to prevent such attacks.

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There's been a lot of talk about big data in the past year. But many companies are still struggling with implementing big data projects and getting useful results from their information.

In this part of our series on 2017 predictions we look at what the experts think will affect the big data landscape in the coming year.

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Users of popular software programs are increasingly discovering that programs which are otherwise very useful are acting in a totally unacceptable manner. Note the following examples:

Adobe Reader can create 257 unique folders under c:\programdata\adobe\arm\reader_11.0.00\<username> each containing the exact same four executables:

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According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales published this October by the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS), the official crime rate all but doubled in the year ending June 2016 after the inclusion of online crime figures for the very first time. In fact, card fraud was cited as the most common crime in the UK. John Flatley, head of crime statistics and analysis at the ONS, stated that members of the public are now 20 times more likely to be a victim of fraud than of robbery.

The Numbers Are Soaring!

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