Cyber Security Driving the IT market

A number of high profile attacks on Polish firms’ data security has put the IT security business under the spotlight once again By Beata Socha The CEOs of companies included in Deloitte’s latest Fast 50 ranking (a ranking of the fastest growing IT businesses across CEE countries), published in late October, claim that data security is one of the market sub-segments with the greatest potential for growth over the coming year. It came in fourth after cloud computing (with nearly 60 percent of the CEOs believing in its growth potential), mobile technologies and business software. The data security business is already quite well developed in Poland, although significantly smaller than in Western European countries. The entire IT security submarket in Central European countries (Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania) is currently valued at $685 million, with Poland accounting for nearly half of the total sum, according to IT industry research firm IDC. Data security is also among the fastest growing sub-segments of the IT market. Its value is expected to increase by 7 percent over the entirety of 2015. The IT security submarket can be broken down into three areas. The largest of them, at least in Central European countries, is IT security services, accounting for 40 percent of the submarket and dominated by large international corporations such as HP and IBM. The second area, security software, accounts for a third of the market and is growing at an impressive pace of 9 percent a year. The smallest slice, security hardware, constitutes a quarter of the pie. In Poland, the two main reasons behind the growth of the IT security business are the constantly evolving data security regulations (both domestic and international) as well as the ever increasing number of potential threats. Embarrassing and dangerous One of the most feared threats to data security is, naturally, theft. Often performed either by an external hacker or, also quite frequently, by a disgruntled former or current employee. Such thefts occur rather often and have been known to cause many companies (and their clients) serious problems, the least of which being major embarrassment as was the recent case when the Ashley Maddison website was hacked. In Poland, banks seem to be among the favored targets of data hackers. For example, Polish Plus Bank suffered such a data breach in April of this year. A group of hackers wanted to extort some PLN 200,000 by threatening to publish the bank’s confidential client data. Failing to receive monetary “compensation” the hackers released the data. In September the list of default debtors of Getin Noble Bank was stolen and put up for sale. Poland’s biggest lender, PKO had also fallen prey to a similar data theft four years previously. Accidental data leaks, usually with no foul play involved, are also quite a serious plague among businesses. Only a few weeks ago a video streaming portal kinoman.tv suffered a security breakdown which revealed the e-mail addresses of its users, according to niebezpiecznik.pl a website devoted to IT security issues. Given that the legality of using online video streaming is strongly debatable the incident may have given the users serious cause for concern. Public institutions are also often targeted by hackers, either to serve their political agenda or simply to cause a stir. According to niebezpiecznik.pl, during a recent election campaign there was a time when entering the website address of one political party would result in being redirected to the internet page of its opponent. Keep your guard up Unsurprisingly, the largest contributors to the growth of IT security market this year have been financial sector companies, alongside public institutions and energy firms. The health care business offers a lot of potential for the security business too. Still, many smaller firms don’t seem to see the point of investing in IT security and fail to take similar threats seriously. Overall, IT security expenditure makes up between 2.5 percent and 15 percent of the total IT costs in Polish companies, IDC stated. According to a recent survey commissioned by HP, only one out of every ten mid-sized companies has a dedicated IT security department. Almost half of all firms rely on their in-house IT team to take care of data security, while 36 percent scatter the responsibility for data security across several departments. Only 9 percent decide to outsource this part of their business to professional IT security companies which suggests there is still a lot of room for growth in this area. On the plus side, the same study revealed that nearly a third of all Polish SMEs plan on increasing their spending on IT security while the majority (62 percent) have no intention of cutting back on data security. Nor should they as the number of hacker attacks on Polish companies continues to increase. “Let’s not kid ourselves – anyone can become the victim of a cyber attack – from the hijacking of your e-mail to breaking into your bank account, to hacking companies’ and public institutions’ IT systems. In each of these cases the consequences can be dire to both the personal and financial data of the users as well as the company’s image and credibility. It is particularly important for firms managing other people’s data or financial assets,” Michał Iwan, managing director at F-Secure in Poland, told niebezpiecznik.pl. “The responsibility in a case like this falls primarily on the user who can’t be bothered to increase the strength of his password. The employees of the IT department are also often to blame, particularly when they fail to implement necessary procedures and safeguards, for example, requiring employees to change their password periodically,” explained Iwan. Social phenomenon Nevertheless, even if they do put those safeguards in place, people can be relied upon to foil any attempts at bolstering security. When forced to change passwords on a regular basis they often rely on a “tried and tested” method of generating them, for example, the current month and year, thus making the job of hackers even easier. That is one of the reasons why niebezpiecznik.pl recently started a campaign under the patronage of the Interior Ministry aimed at educating people about data security. Another, often underrated, reason why hacking has become easier is the increasing use of social media with social website users paying little or no attention to security issues when posting their personal details online. “Unfortunately, in the age of constant and rapid expansion of web resources and unwarranted trust in their security, attacks based on social engineering are increasingly successful. This way we expose ourselves to the loss of sensitive data and to incurring serious financial losses, thus putting our careers, as well as the wellbeing of the entire company, at risk,” said Iwan.