New Year Outlook

Well, its good to be back from the Christmas and New Year's holidays. We're a little late getting to our New Year's outlook on the coming year, but to be honest, entime off was well deserved. With that in mind, we want to highlight a few things we see as being large or continued stories in 2014 in the world of privacy, investigations and security. Let's see what will shape the landscape on those topics in the coming year:

• Snowden will continue to make waves as the government tries to reign him in. He is holding on to enough juicy tidbits to keep this ball rolling throughout the year. Importantly, the big internet companies will see more action in court as they try and distance themselves from the appearance of being in cahoots with the NSA, and may out out some new encryption standards which have been developed without the special sauce provided by the NSA. 
• Also related to Snowden, look to more operators offering "secure" online interactions. While interesting at the start, they will also lead to a greater level of attacks and sophistication in exploiting perceived protections. Think of Snapchat and Lavabit for those who know.
• On the security front as a whole, we will continue to see the sad march to automation and new standards designed to save mid-level managers the discomfort of taking 4 seconds to secure information. Federal Govenment et al, will see more major blunders as a result.
• On the economy, a stronger economic footing will allow us to enjoy reduced employee based crime as wages and stability help calm the masses. That being said, on the fraud front, managers will be granted relaxed fiscal controls, which will inevitably lead to something about hands and cookie jars. Also on this front, better economic conditions usually also lead to lessened rates of family violence and drug abuse. 
• The investigations industry on the whole in Canada will strengthen we think. This will be due to economic factors which will allow business to tackle problems requiring outside help and the easing of purse strings will help outside of Canada. The push in jurisdicitons such as the UK and the US will also continue towards more regulation of the industry in terms of licencing and basic standards, which should be good news for local investigators and those of us trying to  contract investigators in those countries for assistance with cases elsewhere.

That about does it for our outlook. We definitely are looking forward to 2014 and the new and exciting challenges it will bring. We wish all a happy and prosperous new year!

Blogging provided by Elemental Investigations: Private Investigator Edmonton, a Canadian Private investigations and security consulting agency.