Axiomatics released its top enterprise security trends from industry executives on the challenges enterprises can expect to see in 2017.

Based on expert commentary from security leaders at Axiomatics, the trends identify five key areas that range from regulation and compliance to the increasing importance of securing the Internet of Things, so data is not accessible to the wrong people.

“This year’s trends examine the evolving ways organizations can realize better enterprise-wide security with the exploding amounts of data that enterprises need to protect,” said Marty Leamy, president of the Americas at Axiomatics. “Business executives are demanding better enterprise-wide security for all of their data, not only for regulatory compliance but also to protect their most critical assets.”

Key enterprise security trends for 2017 include:

Digital Transformation 

• Digital transformation is a key priority for enterprises, but most IT decision makers have not completed technology deployments to address the initiatives that are critical to digital business.
• Digital transformation is about improving the customer experience by modernizing tools and processes within an organization. One major digital transformation initiative is moving infrastructure to the cloud.
• Identity and access management technology, like dynamic authorization, is a key enabler of digital transformation, it allows secure cloud experiences. It helps companies deliver more personal, convenient and trusted mobile experiences to customers, employee and partners, while enabling secure access to apps and data in the cloud.

The Internet of Things (IoT) 

• IoT is about interconnectivity. There is an increasing number of interconnected electronic devices producing massive amounts of data. For example, there are consumer appliances, wearables, vehicles, buildings and other physical devices that now have networking capabilities.
• The benefits seem endless, but the security of the communication between devices could reveal new attack vectors to compromise the networked managed home or connected vehicle.
• The key to securing IoT is putting controls in place to ensure that IoT data is not accessible to the wrong parties.

Microservices and APIs 

• Microservices are the latest approach to breaking down large applications. With a microservices architecture, the functions of an application are built as discrete components that communicate with each other via APIs. This approach lends itself to a faster, almost continuous development and deployment cycle.
• From a security perspective, building many microservices components could mean that you also need to enhance your strategy for securing access to the individual components. An API gateway combined with an Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) approach can be very beneficial.

Wider Adoption of Hadoop 

• More and more organizations will be adopting Hadoop and other big data stores, in turn, organizations will have a need to secure the massive amounts of data stored in Hadoop and other big data stores.
• Organizations will want to enforce access to big data stores with a contextual, policy-based approach, to safeguard sensitive data stored in Hadoop and other big data stores.

Regulation and Compliance 

• Regulatory compliance has always been a challenge within the security industry – and especially working across borders and complying with different regulations in various countries and regions. In addition, the changing of the guard in the United States could impose new types of regulatory challenges.
• Attribute Based Access Control can help meet and manage the moving target of compliance. A policy-based approach provides centralization of management, ease of change, and enforcement across the enterprise.

“Vast amounts of data are generated every second yet organizations across all industries are struggling with securing that data,” said Leamy. “We believe that identity access management technologies and shifting to Attribute Based Access Control can effectively ensure enterprise-wide security and privacy.”