Australian security managers have highlighted the need to provide secure remote access for their organisation’s employees as a top security priority in the year head according to a survey conducted by WatchGuard Technologies at last week’s Security 2010 conference and exhibition in Sydney.
The survey found that 48 percent of IT security managers will focus on the provision of remote access security as their top priority in the year ahead with application security and threat detection the next two areas for urgent consideration.
However, in terms of hard investment dollars, 48 percent of respondents will channel funds into security for compliance purposes while 39 percent will invest in information leakage solutions and Unified Threat Management appliances. The survey found that the top three key objectives for security investment include protection against theft or inappropriate disclosure of sensitive and confidential information, the need to improve business continuity and prevention against unauthorised employee access to files and data.
In evaluating specific security vendor offerings, 65 percent of respondents value a security product’s effectiveness and accuracy while 57 percent value the product’s reliability.
The survey also found that 65 percent of IT security professionals spend between 30 minutes and two hours per day on non-work related web sites with 39 percent indicating that they could not live without access to news and sports web sites while at work. Thirty-five per cent of respondents could not live without access to blogs and online communities and 22 percent cherished access to banking and finance web sites while at work.
Scott Robertson, Regional Director ANZ, WatchGuard Technologies, said, “The survey points to the current dynamics for Australian IT security manager spending patterns as they continue to face next generation threats and regulatory compliance pressures which in turn are forcing them to recalibrate and recalculate risk management practices. Increasing protection remains a challenge but the survey suggests that organisations are looking for solutions that can fully protect against today’s complex threats while ensuring network uptime for employees wherever they may be located.”
