According to security experts at data governance outfit Varonis, 2013 will be the year of the salami attack. On the plus side, they also predict that the world will not come to an end on December 21st 2012.
It's not just salami that your business needs to worry about in terms of tech though. Varonis also points towards challenges such as the growing gap between people in a company who know how to find information and those who do not (the importance of intelligent internal search, retention and data archiving), the growing gap between how people use technology at work and at home (who owns the IP of a document created on a personal device, for example?) and the closing collaborative gap (business needs to collaborate with third parties in the same efficient way they do with internal partners).
But that's all by the by, anyone reading this is probably wondering just what the heck a salami attack is and conjuring up images of a masked man hitting the servers with a spicy sausage. Thankfully, Varonis co-founder Yaki Faitelson can clarify: "A bit like a sandwich is pieced together one ingredient a time, we believe that the vast expanse of information about employees and business partners poses a new and very real threat to organisations. All the individual scraps of information about an individual online can be researched and pieced together to create a complete picture – who they are, where they work, what school their children attend. It’s all there waiting to be plundered and the primary thing that saves most people is nobody is looking for them. But what if someone were? It’s important that, as an organisation, you make sure your employees – especially those in key positions, are made aware of the risks. Consider collecting the information that’s easily accessible on one employee to demonstrate what can be done to really bring the message home."
