Published : Oct. 2, 2013 - 19:53
Brendan Hannigan, general manager of IBM’s security systems division, gives a presentation on its strategy in the security market in Seoul on Tuesday. (IBM)
A general manager of IBM’s security business division warned that attacks would be more malicious and sophisticated than in the past, urging companies to be prepared and vigilant.
“There will always be attackers, especially when all of those technologies including cloud and mobile newly emerge,” said Brendan Hannigan, general manager of IBM’s security systems division, at a meeting with reporters in Seoul on Tuesday.
“IBM’s aim is to address the need for new approaches to secure businesses.”
There are some key problems that customers face that are common both in Korea and worldwide, according to the IT security manager.
While infiltrating and changing the content of a company’s website was the main objective for an aggressor in the past, now sophisticated measures such as those focused on doing damage and fraud against a certain enterprise or business over a long period of time are prevalent.
“Now we have very sophisticated teams who target companies to steal car designs, rob money, really create (problems) for a company. They may take more than 18 months to begin executing their attacks,” the security expert said.
New technology is another source of security concerns.
As companies are beginning to move some of their applications and data to Internet with cloud services, they are more exposed to outside risks than before.
New gadgets such as Samsung mobile phones or Apple products could put employees and firms at risk as many employees are bringing the devices to work and accessing corporation information using the devices without the corporation even knowing.
IBM’s framework is focused on technologies that help their customers to address these relatively new problems.
The U.S. IT firm has technology to help manage, understand and ensure appropriate usage of data, and detect identities and privileges.
“IBM, with its security intelligence technologies and security intelligence platform, collects information of every piece of business, applications, data and network, and then reduces billions of (pieces of) data down to one or two,” he said.
Technology in the past from a security perspective, he said, was mainly about building a fortress like “building a castle around the perimeter of a business.”
“IBM is focused on intelligence, analytics, identity and fraud. If you look at the breadth of what it is we offer, there is no company that does what IBM does. We are going to be a leader in the segments in which we are operating.”
By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)