Security is supposedly one of the biggest IT business priorities for 2005. And the attention that security is garnering at the moment is having a substantial effect on the other aspects of IT.

Jay Heiser, VP and director of research in the information security and risk area at Gartner, says one of the biggest buzzwords in the security space today is intrusion prevention. “Essentially, intrusion prevention is the art of using computers to protect computers, or seeking automated methods of responding to attacks against the corporate networks. The majority of today`s attacks are automated, and the only practical response is to seek increasingly automated forms of defence.” Within a few years, he predicts, all firewalls will offer intrusion prevention technology. “The one thing that is changing in this landscape is that vendors are putting more intelligence into monitoring suspicious activity and doing something about it.”