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Survey Spotlights Consumers' Influence on Enterprise IT
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Cisco announced the results of a survey exploring the security implications of social networking and the use of personal devices in the enterprise. One of the most striking findings was that employees are consistently working around information technology security policies to use unsupported devices and applications. Another significant finding: 71 percent of the survey respondents said that overly strict security policies have a negative impact on hiring and retaining employees under age 30.
Conducted on behalf of Cisco by InsightExpress, the survey polled 500 IT security professionals across the United States, Germany, Japan, China and India. The results illustrate that the consumer influence on enterprise IT is growing and that more employees are bringing personal devices and applications into the network, presenting new business opportunities and security challenges. The survey explores the changing enterprise security landscape due to the evolving requirements of today's borderless networks, the benefits and drawbacks of accommodating an increasingly mobile workforce, and the challenges of protecting sensitive and proprietary data.
Highlights
More than half of the survey respondents have determined that their employees use unsupported applications, including:
Social networking -- 68 percent
Collaborative -- 47 percent
Peer to peer -- 47 percent
Cloud -- 33 percent
Nearly half (41 percent) of the respondents have determined that employees have been using unsupported devices, and more than one-third of that number said they have had a breach or loss of information due to unsupported network devices.
Despite these trends, about half (53 percent) of the IT respondents said they are likely to allow personal devices on the network in the next 12 months and 7 percent already support personal devices.
More than half (51 percent) listed "social networking" as one of the top three biggest security risks to their organization, while one in five (19 percent) considers it the highest risk.
Social networking tools are an unprecedented and highly beneficial tool for many parts of organizations, including human resources, marketing and customer service.
Nearly three out of four survey respondents said that overly strict security policies have a moderate or significant negative impact on hiring and retaining employees under age 30.
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[Full Article]
Jul-04-2010 |
Federal Tech Spending to Reach $112 Billion
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Spending in the federal information technology market will grow from $86 billion in 2010 to $112 billion in 2015, at a compound annual growth rate of 5.4 percent, according to Federal Information Technology Market, 2010-2015, a new report from INPUT.
Contrary to other industry groups forecasting negative growth in the government contracting market, INPUT's research shows that while overall spending growth has decreased, the Obama administration's management priorities, coupled with empirical spending trends, strongly suggest that IT spending has some protection from significant reductions.
The report strengthens the fact that IT budgets are somewhat insulated from major cuts by outlining that initiatives for cost reduction, increased efficiency, and program oversight and performance all depend on IT. In fact, some of the administration's near-term priorities revolve around IT: leveraging shared services, automating processes to improve delivery of citizen services, cybersecurity, and investing in technology infrastructure to reduce energy costs.
That gap in federal IT expertise also addresses contractors' concerns regarding insourcing in the federal work force. INPUT analysts predict that the government will face difficulty in growing its work force to a degree required to significantly reduce its reliance on contractors, especially as agencies strive to fulfill more requirements using fewer resources.
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[Full Article]
Jul-04-2010 |
Gartner says Secure Enterprises will Safely Reduce the Share of Security in their IT Budgets by 3 to 6% of Overall IT Budgets through 2011
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While security risks are not going away for companies, efficient and secure enterprises will actually safely reduce the share of security spending by 3 to 6 percent of their overall IT budgets through 2011, according to Gartner, Inc. Organizations with very mature and recently updated security programs will be able to show even greater efficiencies.
While security spending tied to "keeping the bad guys out" was not heavily affected by the economy and will remain on pace for 2010, a significant number of IT security organizations had to scale back on large, capital-intensive projects in 2009. In 2010, however, security spending that is more tightly tied to new business initiatives, such as complex identity and access management (IAM) and data loss prevention (DLP) projects, is beginning to reappear.
IAM is the top security priority for 20 percent of organizations surveyed in Gartner's 2010 CIO Survey, making it the clear leader among the most-important projects. More than 40 percent of organizations named intrusion prevention systems, patch management, DLP, antivirus and identity management among the top five security priorities for 2010.
In addition, spending is set to continue for such priorities as supporting guest networking and employee teleworking, securing wireless LANs, meeting Payment Card Industry standards, consolidating audit trails, security information and event management, and penetration testing requirements. Gartner is also continuing to see strong spending on intrusion prevention.
North American companies led security spending in 2009, averaging 5.5 percent of IT budgets. This compares with 5 percent in Asia/Pacific, 4.8 percent in Latin America and 4.3 percent in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Security spending also varied significantly from industry to industry and was typically higher for industries that are high-visibility or in regulated environments or require higher levels of risk mitigation, such as professional services (6.8 percent), government (5.9 percent), and banking and financial services (5.3 percent) because of requirements for the protection of lives, financial assets and intellectual property.
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[Full Article]
Jun-20-2010 |
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