The app economy demands a new security approach

Protection is still the main driver for security, but a new CA study reveals that organizations understand the application economy demands a new view and approach to security.

“Today we need to live in a security-first world — light-years from the days when security was an afterthought and bolted on after a service or application was deployed,” said Amit Chatterjee, executive vice president, CA Technologies. “With the application economy going full-throttle in the hyper-connected world of people, devices and expanding ambient data, businesses realize that security goes beyond protection. The same tools that govern who and what can access our data, also can deliver a frictionless and positive customer experience and contribute to business growth in a variety of ways.”

Key findings:

1. Mobility matters: Improving the mobile customer experience was cited as a top security priority (42 percent), second only to protecting against data breach (56 percent). In addition, 49 percent of respondents say mobility has a big or significant impact on security practices and policies with respect to customers. We expect this number to expand as mobility, BYOD and the Internet of Things drive an increasingly “unwired enterprise” where perpetual connectivity adds a complexity and security risk that must be addressed for employees, customers and partners.

2. The desire to innovate quickly: Success in the application economy requires businesses to innovate and release applications more quickly, and API-assembled apps will lead the way. To facilitate that need, 79 percent of respondents are opening their data as APIs to accelerate mobile and web application delivery, improve customer engagements and open new revenue channels and opportunities. This adds new considerations to the protection factor of security.

3. New attitudes adopted: Forty-eight percent of respondents recognize that business enablement is an important benefit of security and can drive growth. Seventy-eight percent of respondents have seen or expect to see increased revenue from new services enabled by improved security.

4. Increase in security investment: A new view toward security and the protection and enablement it offers has sparked an increase in security investment. According to respondents, 25 percent of all IT spending will be devoted to security in the next three years, up from 18 percent today.