70 percent of IT professional still rely on passwords alone
Over seven in ten security professionals are still relying on passwords
alone to secure their networks, according to a new survey.
Passwords are still the most common security measure for mobile working,
with 71 percent relying on it, according to research carried out by
encryption company SafeNet.
The poll of 1,200 IT managers and security professionals, also showed that
60 percent used VPNs, 23 percent digital certificates and only 10 percent
used smart cards. Over 50 percent of organisations support mobile working
for more than one in ten employees and 20 percent of organisations support
remote working for over 50 percent of staff.
Gary Clark, EMEA vice president of SafeNet said more employers and employees
now see the benefit of remote working. "But with thousands of people
connecting from outside the corporate firewall, more appropriate security
measures are needed to protect sensitive business information," he said.
"Password protection is no deterrent to a determined hacker, and leaves the
door wide open to exploitation," said Clark. "More robust and flexible
security measures should be put in place in conjunction with staff education
on the threat of lax security.
year through security breaches. "Ensuring that corporate networks are only
accessed by those people authorised to do so, will go a tremendous way
towards reversing that trend," he said.
Another survey, this time of the healthcare sector on the use of portable
data storage devices, found that almost two thirds use no or inadequate
security and that half of those in the NHS use their own equipment to store
data.
The survey, carried out by Pointsec Mobile Technologies and the British
Journal of Healthcare Computing & Information Management on information
managers, IT managers, medical professionals, also found that one fifth of
the devices used to store data have no security on them at all and a further
two fifths have only password-controlled access.
USB memory sticks and memory cards (76 percent) were the most popular mobile
device to be used to download data in the healthcare sector followed by
laptops and tablet PCs (69 percent), PDA/Blackberry (51 percent), smartphone
(9 percent) and mobile phone (2 percent). Advances in technology have
resulted in the ability to store gigabytes of information not just in these
devices but also MP3 music players, cameras, voice recorders etc. The easy
availability of tiny, high capacity storage devices such as USB memory
sticks and memory cards makes it very easy for a person to carry unnoticed
large amounts of data such as patient records or sensitive corporate data.
Martin Allen, managing director of Pointsec Mobile Technologies UK said the
survey showed the medical sector is worried about medical information being
held on mobile devices which are not being secured by their NHS Trust.
"It will only be a matter of time before these weaknesses are exploited as
it is very easy to steal or pick up a mobile device and access the
information for ill-purposes," said Allen.
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