RSA’s VP of Product and Management and Strategy, Sam Curry, spoke on emerging security trends and the obstacles facing smaller companies in the coming year.

In an interview with The Channel this week, Curry said that because of financial incentives many criminals are giving up targeting large companies, which can be difficult to crack, and are now focused on targeting smaller companies. Smaller companies can be easier to access, which means a bigger payout in terms of time invested.

“It’s the smaller companies that are now being given the full brunt and bore of the industrial-level online crime that previously only targeted the biggest targets,” he said.

Because of this, Curry said that partners need to enhance the dialogue they have with customers in order to better manage a company’s risk. He also placed focus on the importance of cloud computing and said that while it allows companies to be more ubiquitous and reach more markets, small companies still need to be able to manage information stored in the cloud.

“We’re focusing a lot of attention around the cloud, the private cloud in particular… and how you get those virtualised and how you get the same or better controls as you had within a legacy environment,” Curry said.

The landscape is constantly changing and there are plenty of threats on RSA’s radar, such as the increasing use of botnets to scan information on a machine, but there’s no surefire way to figure out the next big threat as that’s exactly what cyber criminals don’t want.

“If I actually predicted what the next threat would be, I’d probably be wrong if people listened to me,” he said.

Nonetheless, he said that RSA predicts that infections will continue to intensify as cyber criminals get their hands on funding. Other threats include the increased use of botnets, mining through social networks and the threat of the dark cloud, or the criminals using cloud technology to more efficiently commit cyber crimes.

“The bad guys are learning the same tools and techniques and tricks and even using the same tools in some cases,” Curry said. “I expect to see the continuing cloud enablement of the criminals.”

Curry said that RSA places a great deal of importance on its partners and encourages partners to have a continuing dialogue with customers as to total security protection, managing risk and threat factors for small businesses.