Eighty-one per cent of PCs lack basic security, according to recent research carried out by software and hardware security developer and vendor Sophos.
More than 60% of those surveyed were missing at least one Microsoft security patch, half had their client firewalls disabled and 15% were running out-of-date security software or had disabled their protection altogether.
John Shaw, director of endpoint security and control at Sophos, noted that the lack of basic security is not limited to company size. “This problem is not only affecting smaller companies,” he said.
“One quarter of testers represented enterprises with more than 1,000 users, while 36% were mid-sized companies ranging between 100 and 1,000 users.”
Shaw urged IT managers to investigate their endpoint security now, rather than having to perform a “post mortem to find the holes” after a problem arises.
This greater awareness in IT security has lead to security companies performing well despite the global economic downturn.
The security software market boomed 19.8% in 2007 to reach $8.7 billion (approximately €5.6 billion), with email security and security information and event management (SIEM) leading the way, according to IT researchers and analysts Gartner.
Symantec remained the most economically successful security company, followed by McAfee and Trend Micro.
Gartner analyst, Ruggero Contu, explained: “Compliance, data leakage and privacy issues, along with the need to tackle the fast evolving and sophisticated threat environment, are among the major drivers fuelling the growth of spending on security.”
However, these security giants cannot protect against all forms of data leakage.
A survey of 1,000 UK and US mobile workers revealed that two thirds of participants have eavesdropped on others’ business conversations while a third have seen sensitive information on someone else’s laptop. Over 10% of these admitted using this information for their own business purposes.
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