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IT security survey reveals issues hindering UK industries
Email marketing specialist, emedia, has released its RapidResearch quarterly IT security survey which reveals that enterprises are continuing to provide a window of opportunity for viruses to perpetuate and spread. IT managers feel that security measures are hampered by lack of senior management priority and the shortfall between investment and requirements. With the recent and predicted increase in virus and spam attacks, companies may be sleep walking into greater security problems for the future.
RapidResearch conducted an online survey with 100 UK IT managers and directors across the technology, finance, construction, education, transport, health and telecoms industry sectors.
Anti-virus and patch management are the first lines of defence in IT security loopholes but amazingly, 12 per cent do not update their software frequently enough leaving one month or more between updates. This goes some way to explain why at the time of answering, 5 per cent of respondents advised that a virus currently infected them, despite all using anti-virus software.
Surely, as virus attacks continue to rise, some companies are continuing to fall far short of their responsibilities to ensure systems are uninfected.
David Clark, Managing Director at emedia commented: "The battle against viruses continues to rage. Companies can not afford to overlook the effective use of the tools available. Smart policies and practices should ensure that opted-in requested communication gets through and the unsolicited and potentially infected communication does not."
Virus writers exploit critical vulnerabilities in commercial software, and vendors are finding it hard to ensure companies apply patches as soon as flaws are discovered. Thirty per cent of senior IT managers surveyed felt that the most important improvement that could be made was to keep technology up-to-date. Other areas highlighted for improvement were staff education (26 per cent) and security skills (20 per cent).
Yet many companies surveyed are not planning to invest significantly in IT security. Seventy per cent will be spending less than £10,000 this year. This indicates a huge difference between outlay, priority and needs. Fifty four per cent felt that security was not a top priority for senior management, and only 5 per cent took the view that cost was the most negative effect on their business from a security incident. They rather named time spent (53 per cent) and disruption (36 per cent) as the biggest negative effects.
Not surprisingly, 61 per cent think that security incidents will get worse in 2005. 08.09.2004, emedia
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