The executive advisory board at Stonesoft, an innovative provider of security solutions, which is comprised of companies on the Forbes Global 500 and several others met on April 23, 2012 to discuss the security challenges and threats posed by cyber criminals and how to keep these attackers at bay.

"The threat landscape has changed since the inception of Stonesoft," said Ilkka Hiidenheimo, founder and CEO at Stonesoft. "It is much more dangerous than we ever expected, particularly due to the rapid expansion of mobile devices and cloud-based applications."

While the board uniformly agreed on a broad range of security challenges, it pinpointed the four main areas that are of immediate concern for 2012.

The rapid expansion of mobile devices and cloud-based applications has increased the extent of 'attacker expand' and this has been compounded by the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) concept that seems to be quickly catching up in organizations.

Members agreed that the tussle between controlling access to data and internal services and increasing demand by employees to use their own mobile devices at the workplace was an ongoing and needed to be addressed.

Threat management and profiling was cited as a top priority and a proactive approach that helped, not only to identify emerging threats but also preempt breaches through threat profiling.

While not denying the power of the cloud, members found the loss of control and inability of the IT department to manage user access to be disconcerting. Single-sign on to Software-as-a-Service presented a challenge with many users demanding access to cloud-based applications.

Overall, the IT cost of organizations are increasing in the wake of federal and industry compliance and reporting requirements.

Further, Richard Benigno, senior vice president at Stonesoft, U.S., observed that developing talent to address the upcoming expansion of information security would also count as a top priority.