According to Kramer, the IT security industry has operated on the premise that it protects networks and servers for organisations but, he says, today the threat against those systems has evolved.
As a result, he told Infosecurity, we need to protect the IT system as a whole.
Basic security, he says, is now needed on almost every IT interaction but, he adds, conventional network security and firewall systems are useless when it comes to accessing services like online banking.
"You now have to protect against industrialised hacking. Criminals are now stealing data within the browser. There are now some very sophisticated malware attacks taking place", he explained.
In parallel with this evolution in online attacks and threats, Kramer says he has seen an evolution in the way data is handled in most organisations.
As a result, he says, the process of trying to control data at the endpoint is like trying to unscramble an egg that has been scrambled – it simply cannot be done with today's resources.
A classic case of how data cannot be controlled is the US government data leak that has driven the WikiLeaks saga in recent weeks. This, he says, shows how difficult the process is, even if you have the best security in place – if the data is shared between a lot of people, then you have problems.
Kramer says that one of the security technologies that can be deployed to defend against data leaking is digital rights management (DRM), both on data within an organisation, or out on the internet.
"There needs to be a focus on DRM protecting files going to third parties. We also need DRM in the cloud, especially now that a growing number of organisations are moving their data into a cloud computing environment" he said.
To effectively tackle this issue, Kramer recommends that IT managers adopt a three-pronged strategy, the first of which is to embed security into the appliance.
The second is to adopt a bottom-up approach to security, implementing well-rounded IT security in the cloud and using private, as well as public cloud system resources.
The third strategy, he says, is to extend the security envelope around cloud services for the raft of small-to-mid-sized businesses (SMBs) that will be adopting cloud services in 2011.
The cloud, he says, is going to be very important – as a data resource – in 2011. And as a result, he adds that IT managers will face a security challenge of defending data as it moves from a centralised resource to a cloud-based environment.
"The problem facing many companies, however, is that they have made a huge investment in their existing IT security hardware. How do you then persuade them to migrate that security to the cloud environment?" he pondered.
Against this backdrop, Kramer says that he expects to see more sophisticated attacks against IT systems and data in 2011, adding that advanced attacks against web applications is almost certain to be the next area that cybercriminals will focus their attentions on.