Report: Advanced Technologies for Data and Network Security Yet to Catch-up in IT Industry

IDC (News - Alert) on behalf of Secure Computing Corporation, an enterprise gateway security company, has conducted a survey on security issues related to data and electronic messaging. The new commissioned survey indicated that most of the organizations still require adequate protection against spam and data leakage.

 

Nearly 100 IT professionals and security decision makers in North American companies ( with 500 or more employees) were surveyed and the results indicate that nearly 72 percent of organizations had no solution for preventing data leaks over email and 89 percent of organizations did not have an anti-spam solution, which was effective.

 

Most of the IT departments also lacked in technologies that are required for advanced mail protection and said they intended to upgrade their present messaging security infrastructure.

 

Data loss prevention and email encryption are two top issues for IT executives. According to IDC, nearly 80 to 90 percent of the data loss incidents are accidental. These accidental loss of data issues are a bigger issue for the companies rather than deliberate leaks. Nearly 44 percent of companies surveyed said they were worried about accidental loss while only five percent of the companies kept a watch on insiders leaking sensitive data.   

 

Data leakage can occur over e-mail as well. The survey indicates that nearly 85 percent of respondents have reported that they were concerned about the data leakage over email, but only 28 percent of these respondents had deployed data leakage prevention system and the remaining 56 percent of these respondents are intending to deploy in near future.

 

The survey also indicated that nearly 28 percent of large organizations reported an increase in spam complaints by more than 10 percent, since the previous year.  Also, only 11 percent of organizations surveyed  said they were satisfied with their current advanced messaging security systems while 60 percent complained that their current security solution could not provide even 95 percent effectiveness.

 

One of the key findings of the survey indicated that companies continue to be concerned about email-borne malware, with 56 percent worried about malicious URL links, 49 percent worried about phishing attacks and 47 percent worried about malicious attachments.

 

In order to prevent both inbound and outbound threats, the organizations were more interested in adopting hybrid solutions that combine both on-premise and in-the-cloud security measures. Nearly 70 percent of companies wished to have a single solution that could addresses both inbound and outbound threats. But, more than 50 percent of the total companies did not use these latest technologies and still are relying on connection and/or reputation-based technology - to drop threats at the network level, which are less than 75 percent effective.

 

The survey also indicated that most of the companies are adopting virtualization as a measure to cut costs, with 34 percent of companies are planning to adopt virtual security appliances by next year.

 

"Overall, our survey found that organizations need to increase their efforts in combating email security risks," said Brian Burke, program director, security products at IDC. "While organizations have expressed concern about inbound and outbound email security, their current solutions are not getting the job done. Only 11 percent of those surveyed had adequate inbound protection, and over 70 percent have nothing in place for data loss prevention on email. Such organizations need to take advantage of new solutions and delivery models."

 

The survey raises awareness to the need for organizations to accelerate their adoption of next generation email security solutions or increased malware infection through spam and as well as increased data leakage will occur.