Digital Lifescapes

The presence of cybercriminal activity online is an everyday challenge within the enterprise finance sector. Cybercrime is now an established threat to corporations and their customers. It's largely due to IT security policies that are difficult to enforce and the under-utilization of effective encryption. Coupled with the challenges of cybercrime, financial service institutions now experience business model disruption from innovative Fintech start-ups and increasing regulatory oversight from legislation such as the Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2). IT Security Market Development It's in this atmosphere that financial sector leaders must make informed decisions on where to focus their IT budget to achieve security resilience. The Return on Investment (ROI) for an IT security project is not an easy calculation -- knowledge and experience are crucial in making those decisions. The bottom line is the traditional financial sector must apply best-fit cybersecurity me...

If you want to appreciate the full extent of the cloud computing phenomena, then you need to comprehend the ongoing impact to the IT ecosystem. It's been fueled by a disruptive series of innovations that have enabled software developers to accelerate the speed of digital transformation. The cloud delivery and consumption model has revolutionized the entire IT industry. But the cloud opportunity extends well beyond the public cloud -- which makes up less than half of all cloud-related spending today -- and includes private and hybrid clouds, as well as managed cloud services, cloud-related professional services, and hardware and software infrastructure for building clouds. Cloud Computing Market Development In its first forecast of the 'whole cloud' opportunity, International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates that worldwide whole cloud revenues will reach $554 billion in 2021 -- that's more than double those of 2016. "The most obvious takeaway from this forec...

Reports of the doubling in audio and video related mobile network traffic within 2015 highlights the fact that the demand for multimedia entertainment on smartphones and media tablets continues to grow. Meanwhile, revelations of Internet spying by governments, and content vendors worried about the quality of the consumer experience, are driving the mobile communications industry toward end-to-end encryption of more data traffic. According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, apps enabled with content encryption eliminated nearly 60 percent of the traditional video and audio optimization market in 2015. Streaming Media Market Development Moving forward, telecom operators and vendors need to make significant operational moves to protect network performance and create a competitive advantage with streaming media entertainment. "With encryption here to stay, network operators need new tools to manage mobile broadband traffic," said Joe Hoffman, vice pre...

As 2014 draws to a close Juniper Research has offered up a list of predictions for the coming year. The following are some of the highlights. Over the past year, technology industries have evolved at a rapid pace. New devices present challenges that must be addressed, in particular the security of consumer data. In the wake of a number of high profile security breaches, some enterprise companies will need to regain trust. Therefore, Juniper expects to see an increasing investment in encryption and tokenization solutions, as a means of reducing the risk of data loss or theft during 2015. While smart watches have now arrived, they have yet to endear themselves to most consumers. The release of new wearable devices by big name brands will increase awareness, as well as a series of smaller less known players. Notwithstanding the continuing reluctance of a number of U.S. retailers to accept Near Field Communications (NFC) technologies, Juniper believes that Host Card Emulation should...

Messaging on smartphones is assumed to be secure, but recent reports of new threats to user data integrity has created a renewed interest in the BlackBerry BBM robust messaging service. Meanwhile, independent software developers will offer enhanced app-based encryption solutions for other smartphones. Infonetics Research released excerpts from its latest global market study of short message service (SMS) and multimedia messaging service (MMS) security hardware and software -- such as SMS firewalls and mobile messaging security platforms. "The popularity of SMS and MMS has soared over the last decade, but carriers around the globe are just now beginning to seriously evaluate and deploy mobile messaging security solutions, forced by economic, regulatory, and attack conditions," said Jeff Wilson, principal analyst at Infonetics Research . Infonetics has identified an important trend that is a result of more government regulatory pressure across the globe. Major mobile netw...

Mobile phone subscriber identification module (SIM) card annual shipments are expected to rise in 2013 by 5 percent to 5.5 billion units, according to the latest market study by ABI Research. Growth is slowing as markets near saturation and the SIM card becomes increasingly ubiquitous across different mobile network technologies. However, areas of growth remain with new applications, form factors, and an increasing breadth of connected products. As such, the related market value will grow at a higher rate to $2.3 billion this year and ASPs are forecast to increase slightly over the next five years. The emphasis is now on extracting maximum value from the 6.3 -- rising to 7.5 -- billion SIM cards in circulation. ABI believes that 4G mobile network rollouts, Near Field Communications (NFC) and solutions offering more advanced security for payments -- such as DRM, authentication, and encryption -- will all see higher end SIM cards shipping over the next few years. "Follow...