Critical IT infrastructure will increasingly come under cyber attack and service providers will respond, but governments would be slow to react, security trend and predictions for 2011 by Symantec said here today.

"Stuxnet is a worm that affects industrial control systems and is capable of impacting critical infrastructure such as nuclear power plants, dams, water treatment facilities and other factories. Symantec has observed infections in as many as 155 countries, including India," Shantanu Ghosh, Vice-President, India Product Operations, Symantec, said.

"We expect attackers to take the lessons learned from Stuxnet and launch additional attacks targeting critical infrastructure over the course of 2011. Though slower to start, expect the frequency of these types of attacks to increase. In fact, India was the third-most affected country for Stuxnet infections, behind Iran and Indonesia", he said.

According to the expected trend, Zero-day vulnerabilities will become more common as highly targeted threats increase in frequency and impact.

"Exponential adoption of smart mobile devices that blur the line between business and personal use will drive new IT security models will be another trend", he said. Therefore, enterprises looking to address challenges would adopt new models, such as security in the cloud, for solutions that will work seamlessly across platforms and devices, he said.

"Regulatory compliance will drive adoption of encryption technologies more than data breach mitigation", he said.

The explosion of mobile devices in the enterprise not only means organizations will face new challenges in keeping these devices and the sensitive data on them accessible and safe; they also must comply with various industry data protection and privacy regulations.

Many organizations do not disclose when mobile devices containing sensitive data are lost. "This year, we expect regulators will crack down on this, driving organizations to implement encryption technologies. In 2011, organizations will take a more proactive approach and adopt encryption technology to meet compliance standards and avoid the heavy fines and damage to their brands a data breach can cause".

"A new frontier in politically motivated attacks will emerge", he said. Symantec thinks Stuxnet is possibly just the first highly visible indication of attempts at what some might call cyber warfare that have been happening for some time now.

In 2011, more indications of the ongoing pursuit to control the digital arms race will come to light.