IT security has been a vital topic for a long time, but the huge increase of technological advancements and the easy exchange of information has resulted in a cascade of security-related events that have driven security to a new place of importance. This is impacting both consumers and the enterprise—the desire to secure important information, whether corporate secrets or our Amazon password, is top of mind today like it’s never been. Tools for improved anonymization, privacy, encryption, and authentication are in demand.
The announcement that the NSA had paid RSA $10 million to build a back door into their encryption surprised everyone. RSA encryption technology is the de facto industry standard for financial services. But suddenly, having a single point of failure seems extremely troublesome. An established standard is also a higher value target for hackers, because a single breach can grant access to thousands or even millions of data stores. Additionally, a single move—like RSA providing back door access to the NSA—can call the entire infrastructure into question.
Events like this mean more opportunities for new software players to take market share in what, until recently, had appeared to be a maturing and established market. We also see more ammunition for proponents of point solutions, rather than monolithic single-vendor contracts, and this is opening up opportunities for smaller companies, like Corum’s client BeeWare, with innovative solutions to diversify the ecosystem, ultimately making everything more secure.