While an increasing portion of IT budgets are being allocated towards security, 70 percent of respondents in a recent IT security survey said they have been impacted by security breaches and still struggle to mitigate attacks due to limited time and resources.
The study, conducted by Harris Interactive, for NetIQ (which recently took over Novell’s Identity & Security Portfolio) revealed that nearly eight in ten (77 percent) respondents indicated IT security budgets are higher this year compared to last.
Fifty-five percent of respondents admitted to not having the ability to manage security in virtualized and cloud environments and are least confident in their ability to successfully monitor and secure consumer devices, such as smart phones and tablets.
The 200 IT security decision makers within enterprise organizations surveyed revealed that:
Approximately eight in ten experienced the following in the past two years:
• Malware (76 percent)
• Lost/stolen equipment (75 percent)
• External data theft (74 percent)
• Insider data theft (72 percent)
Respondents cited the following as their most difficult challenges:
• Lack of time to monitor vast amounts of data (64 percent)
• Inability to manage security in the cloud (55 percent)
• Inability to manage security in virtualized environments (54 percent)
While survey participants overwhelmingly stated that security solutions have improved in recent years, the amount of stolen data validates that there is still considerable room for improvement:
• Nearly all respondents agree today’s IT security solutions are better than those of five years ago. Four in 10 (44 percent) believe they are “much better.”
• While 65 percent of respondents say they use an identity management solution, external and internal data theft remains high.
“We live in a data-driven society and access to sensitive or proprietary data continues to bleed past organizational walls, making it an ongoing challenge for IT security teams to protect corporate data,” said Jay Roxe, Solution Marketing director, NetIQ. “Organizations must be able to monitor activity across multiple environments, proactively identify and mitigate security threats in real time and allow for meaningful data analysis so that proactive controls can be implemented. By requiring these components, IT security teams can make better use of their resources, tackle the integration of new platforms and technologies and ultimately reduce organizational cost and risk.”
Results of the study are available here.