Global IT Security Risks 2012: Findings

A recent study, entitled “Global IT Security Risks: 2012”, revealed that banning social networking in the workplace is is now a less popular method in promoting productivity and ensuring IT security.

Companies are restricting access to online games, with 71 percent of the IT professionals who took part in the survey say this was part of their strategy.

The study, conducted by Kaspersky Lab, one of the world’s leading developers of secure content and threat management solutions, was carried out in partnership with B2B International in July 2012.

The survey is an indication of the direction towards IT security among medium-to-largecorporations in a global scale.

More than 3,300 senior IT professionals from 22 countries took part in the survey. All respondents had an influence on IT security policy, and a good knowledge of both IT security issues and general business matters (finance, HR, etc.).

The study aims to find out the strategies of IT professionals in medium-sized to large enterprises regarding corporate security solutions, determine their level of knowledge of current threats, and look at how they evaluate risks.

The results also covered measures directly related to infrastructure security and data safety. For example, fifty percent of companies have prohibited the use of file exchange services, and forty-seven percent  enforced similar policies connecting unregistered or external devices to work computers.

More distressing, forty-three percent of IT specialists have already faced deliberate or accidental data leakage due to employee actions. This significant figure suggests there is insufficient access control in storing and communicating corporate information.

Of this figure,forty-two percent of the respondents said that cyber crime will become a bigger concern in the next two years, considering the increasing number of malicious programs and new types of attack.

Half as many of the professionals surveyed believed there would be an increase in other IT risks. Among the IT security risks cited were intellectual property theft (31 percent), computer fraud (26 percent) and industrial espionage (24 percent).

Many respondents also said that it’s important to remember that any ban or restrictions should be applied beyond workstations within the corporate network and cover other computers such as corporate laptops which can be connected to public Wi-Fi networks.

“The surprising figures have changed little over the previous year’s survey, which indicates that there is still a lot of work to do in informing corporations about up and coming threats, the damage these threats will create on companies’ network and data, as well as the policies needed to be placed to ensure security.”

“Any company has to be absolutely prepared to face these security issues if they are serious in pursuing their business goals.”

•   Jimmy Fong, Channel Sales Director for Kaspersky Lab Southeast Asia.

Source: 

Dagooc, Ehda. "Banning social networking sites does not guarantee data safety in workplace – study".29 September 2012. The Freeman. Accessed 1 October 2012. Link Here.