UK enterprises 'clueless' on end-point security
End-point security is being totally overlooked by a significant number of UK organisations, research claimed today.
A survey released by the Secure Computing Corporation found that a fifth of companies are leaving their corporate networks and data exposed to hackers and criminals who can access sensitive information from unprotected access points.
The report said that almost half of British organisations do not even use desktop firewalls. This should be the most basic and fundamental level of security to prevent unauthorised access to sensitive information, Secure Computing said.
Protecting the operating system by ensuring that it has the latest patches is a further area that needs improvement, as over a third of organisations do not keep their operating systems up to date.
Even antivirus software is not used at the end-points of 20 per cent of UK organisations, the survey found.
In terms of identity and access management, 46 per cent of organisations remain "very exposed" as they are still only using passwords.
Some 40 per cent were using hardware tokens, 10 per cent smartcards and five per cent biometrics. But around two per cent of organisations are not using any access control at all.
"Organisations still have a lot of work ahead of them to secure their information," said Andy Philpott, EMEA vice president at Secure Computing.
"Identity and access management is key to ensuring that people only have access to the information that they need and are authorised to use.
"Identity and access management, threat management and content security management are essential to protect sensitive data held in trust by organisations and prevent identity theft.
"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."
Reproduced from an article published by vnunet.com
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http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2159712/uk-enterprises-clueless-point
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