Research Report: The State of IT Security
Our survey of 232 IT and security professionals reveals IT security headaches as well as the steps IT pros are taking to combat the problems
Last year was an abyss for IT security pros, according to 232 ITPro Today readers who responded to a recent survey regarding IT security (download the report below). Battered by ransomware and a stunning variety of well-crafted other attacks, survey respondents expressed fears about the challenges ahead as well as hopes for a better-armed IT security future. Those fears and hopes rest upon, to a large degree, what IT pros see as the weakest (and potentially strongest) link in the security chain: the end user. It’s the end user that IT security pros want to focus their attention on; indeed, at the top of the 2019 wish list was a “more security-aware organizational culture where end users take ownership.”
End-user weakness is particularly dangerous to companies now, with ransomware, which ranks as the leading cause of successful attacks in our survey, reaching companies of all sizes. In response, there’s been a revolution in patching/fixing/updating infrastructure. But much damage has been done: Ransomware using broadly cast malware such as WannaCry infected over a quarter of a million machines worldwide, and the number of platform-targeted (database, web hosting, SCADA platform) malware types rose. This in turn has led to products and practices aimed at prevention, identity control and encryption.
Despite the difficult climate for IT security, our research suggests that IT professionals are in fact rather optimistic – or at least more optimistic than the channel companies that work closely with them. Comparing our survey with a similar one we fielded among IT channel respondents, we found distinctly different takes on how companies’ vulnerability postures have changed over the past year, as well as in the prevalence of breaches. In general, the IT respondents were more optimistic on both counts. We drill into some of the reasons for the differences in attitudes below.
For more detail on these findings, download our free 29-page report.
