The survey was conducted at the Infosecurity Europe conference
by Secure Computing. "48% of organisations do not use desktop
firewalls for end point security," said a statement from Secure
Computing. "This is the most basic and fundamental level of
security that should be deployed to prevent unauthorised access to
sensitive information."
When it came to access to devices, 46% of firms surveyed used
just passwords, despite 70% of the information managers surveyed
believing that signature based security is not sufficient in itself
to protect an organisation. Hardware tokens were used by 40% of
firms and biometrics by 5%.
"Identity and access management is key to ensuring that people
only have access to the information that they need and are
authorised to use”, said Andy Philpott, vice president of Secure
Computing in Europe. "For an organisation to be secure in the
current environment of increased cyber-crime, it must create a
culture of security awareness in the people who have access to
data."
Security technology vendors argue that dangers to computers are
on the increase. Secure Computing said that over 10,800 new virus
and worm variants were identified for the Win32 platform in the
first half of 2005.
Security firm McAfee has warned that the number of threats has
doubled in the last two years. “It’s remarkable to note that it
took 18 years for our database to reach 100,000 malicious threats
and just under two years to double to 200,000,” said Stuart
McClure, senior vice president of global research and threats at
McAfee. “Although security awareness continues to improve, hackers
and malicious code authors are releasing threats faster than ever
before, with approximately 200% more malicious threats per day than
two years ago.”
"In 2004, McAfee added 27,340 new threats to its database. In
2005, it added 56,880 new threats," said a statement from McAfee.
"Since 1st January 2006, McAfee has added approximately 32,000 new
threats to its database and is on track to exceed 60,000 new
threats by the end of this year. Given current trends, McAfee
expects the 400,000th threat to be identified in less than two
years."
