A recent study done by Forrester Consulting has revealed that whilst Web 2.0 usage is already prevalent in enterprises, organisations are far from being prepared to deal with the potential threats associated with the technology.
Done on behalf gateway security company, Secure Computing, the study, which surveyed some 153 IT professionals and security decision makes in companies with at least 1,000 employees, noted the major obstacles were a lack of risk awareness, user training and consistent policies.
According to the study “Today, the Internet is beleaguered with threats such as Phishing, viruses, Spyware, and botnets, all threatening to challenge your business operation. The need to keep inappropriate content at bay, reduce non-business bandwidth consumption, and limit exposure to Internet threats gave rise to the industry of Web filtering. The need for more effective web protection has never been greater.”
The study suggests that about half of the organizations surveyed spent more than 25 thousand dollars in the last fiscal year on malware remediation which is evidence enough that they are wary of Web 2.0 usage and associated threats.
While 97 percent of all enterprise IT staff considers themselves “prepared,” 79 percent have reported frequent attacks from malware. In addition, 79 percent of those surveyed are concerned about viruses, and 77 percent about Trojans, but only 12 percent were concerned about botnets even though bot networks have been growing rapidly as demonstrated by the recent estimate that the storm threat was propagated by over 1 million computers in a single botnet.
Other significant findings include:
• It costs organizations from US – 30 per user per year to recover from malware threats alone
• 92 percent of the respondents indicate that outbound data leakage prevention is an important aspect of Web filtering and 58 percent consider data leakage an extremely important business concern
• That said, only 33 percent of the respondents have data leakage prevention capabilities in place today
In response to these study findings, Secure Computing has launched “SWAT,” the Secure Web 2.0 Anti-threat Initiative to raise awareness of Web 2.0 threats, provide essential guidance on threat protection and deliver leading solutions that help organizations protect themselves in today’s environment. As part of SWAT, Secure Computing will offer research findings, best practices, design criteria, white papers, product information and more.
Secure Computing has also recommend that organizations look beyond a simple filtering solution, and deploy more stringent security methods such as next-generation Web filtering technologies, re-examine the adequacy of security policies and protection capabilities and improve user awareness and training on Web 2.0 and web-borne threats.
visit the SWAT specific website, @ www.securecomputing.com/SWAT
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