Tech Resolutions for 2014 by ISACA

By Sarah Morgan

The New Year is here and we must be prepared for everything it may bring. According to global non-profit IT association ISACA, IT and cyber-security professionals will have to switch gears if they want to successfully deal with the challenges of 2014, especially in cyber-security, data privacy and big data.

“The pace of change expected in 2014 will put incredible pressure on technology professionals in the workplace with a focus on keeping IT risk in check while at the same time delivering value to the business. But this is also a chance for the IT department to be a strategic partner with the business on navigating these issues and opportunities,” said Bhavesh Bhagat, CISM, CGEIT, CEO of EnCrisp, co-founder of Confident Governance and member of ISACA’s new Emerging Business and Technology Committee.

ISACA’s Top 5 Tech Resolutions for 2014

• Prepare for Privacy 2.0 - Attitudes toward data privacy are unlikely to reach a consensus in 2014. Instead, be prepared to accommodate both those with little expectation of privacy and those who view their personal data as currency and want to control how that currency is spent.
• Slim down big data - Explosive data volumes were the #1 issue posed by big data in ISACA’s 2013 IT Risk/Reward Barometer. Unmanageable data creates redundancies and is difficult to keep safe. In 2014, eliminate the excess and consolidate what remains, to promote sharing and protect using better controls.
• Plan to compete for cyber-security and data analytics experts - Demand for smart analytics people and cyber-security defenders with the right certifications is only going to increase in 2014—the year of the data professional. If you plan to recruit , make sure your salary package and job descriptions are competitive.
• Rethink how your organisation is using your information security experts - With some elements of IT security operational responsibility (including malware detection, event analysis and control operation) increasingly being outsourced to cloud providers, smart leaders are enabling their internal security experts to become hunters instead of just defenders. This allows them to proactively deal with the most hard-to-detect threats, build internal intelligence capabilities, construct better metrics and invest in operational risk analysis.
• Ramp up for the Internet of even more Things - With 50 billion devices expected to be connected to the Internet by 2020, start working now on a policy for governing connected devices—many invisible to the end user—if your enterprise doesn’t have one already.

Learn more about information security management, risk management or governance of IT on our ISACA courses.

About the Author:       
Sarah writes for Firebrand Training on a number of IT related topics. This includes exams, training, certification trends, project management, certification, careers advice and the industry itself. Sarah has 11 years of experience in the IT industry.