By Rajani Baburajan, TMCnet Contributor
VanDyke Software, a provider of secure remote access, file transfer, and system administration solutions, and Amplitude Research, which specializes in B2B and technology market research surveys, announced the results of the Sixth Annual Enterprise IT Security Survey.
The survey results show that there has been significant increase in 2010 compared to 2009 in the proportion of large companies reporting an intrusion of their user machines, office network, and/or servers.
According to the survey 67 percent of the firms reported intrusion instances in 2010, compared to 41 percent in the year 2009.
Researchers say the 26 percentage point increase in 2010 versus 2009 is particularly noteworthy because the corresponding figure in 2008 was 56 percent, which then got reduced to 41 in 2009.
Between 2005 and 2008, the proportion of large companies reporting an intrusion ranged from 51 percent to 58 percent. This year's 67 percent is the highest level reported since 2005, company officials said.
The proportion reporting an unauthorized intrusion was fairly steady between 2009 and 2010 for other categories of companies.
The proportion reporting an intrusion was 57 percent in 2009 and 59 percent in 2010 among "midsize" companies and it was 45 percent in 2009 and 43 percent in 2010 among "small" companies.
Among "micro-size" companies the proportion reporting an intrusion was equal at 25 percent in 2009 and 2010. Simultaneously, in 2008 and 2009 the proportion experiencing intrusions did not change significantly for micro, small, and midsize companies.
Those who experienced an intrusion were asked to describe what they believed or suspected were the primarily causes or contributes to past intrusions.
Among the responses, 14 percent were attributed for hackers, 12 percent for lack of adequate security policies, 10 percent for employee Web usage, 9 percent for virus and 8 percent for other employee carelessness.
Other reasons cited by the respondents include unauthorized access by current/former employees (6 percent), weak password policy (5 percent), lack of software updates (5 percent) and software security flaw (5 percent).
For this year’s survey, respondents were also asked about the biggest risks for intrusions of user machines, servers, or office networks in the future. The results showed 25 percent attributing them for viruses, 17 percent for hacking, 12 percent for employee, 5 percent for disgruntled employees and 5 percent for theft.
