Data breaches, confidentiality and privacy will remain key areas of concern in 2011, and these topics fuel many of Ipswitch’s 2011 security predictions.

2011 will be the year that smart companies shift their focus away from tactical (and often reactive) security tools and instead focus strategically on policy creation, management and enforcement.  More organizations will shift their approach from quick-fix to preventative.

Four more 2011 predictions:

• Enterprises will start monitoring and managing the information flowing to and from personal email, IM and cloud-based services.
• The largest data breach of 2011 will hit the retail sector.
• A major data breach with further reaching diplomatic consequences than WikiLeaks will be the direct result of a lost smart phone or USB drive.
• Organizations in the financial, media and health sectors will gain larger market share by leveraging company investments in MFT, specifically those that offer visibility, analysis and analytics.

I’ve blogged a bunch on Ipswitch’s 2010 research that unveiled startling trends about employee access and use of company information.  Our 2011 predictions are in part fueled by some of these facts:

• 40% routinely send confidential information through personal email to eliminate the audit trail from management
• 90% admitted to using thumb drives or other external devices to move work-related files
• 25% send proprietary files to their personal email accounts with the intent of using that information at their next place of employment
• 70% access company data through mobile devices on a weekly basis
• 41% rely on personally owned storage devices to back up business files
• 72% of organizations lack visibility into files moving both internally and externally

And here is a fun video by Frank Kenney on top IT policies that WILL BE INGORED by employees: