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e-mail attacks are the biggest threat
At its annual Vision Conference for IT professionals, Symantec
released the results of a survey conducted with IDC on the awareness and adoption
of security for software among Indian mid-sized companies. A key finding of
the survey is that 63 percent of organisations in the country identified attacks
through e-mail as their biggest security concern because it impacts the integrity
of data stored in their IT systems.
Decision-makers including C-level executives and IT and MIS managers from more
than 400 mid-sized companies (up to 700 employees, with more than 50 PCs) in
major cities—Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune, Hyderabad
and Ahmedabad—participated in the field survey led by IDC covering the
two-month period from July 1 to August 31, 2005.
The survey found that close to 20 percent of companies considered the loss or
exposure of confidential information a major security issue, closely followed
by spam at 13.4 percent. In the latest Symantec Internet Security Threat Report
(Volume VIII, September 2005) the company observed that spam made up 61 percent
of all e-mail traffic, and that one out of every 125 e-mail messages scanned
by the Symantec Brightmail AntiSpam solution was a phishing attempt, an increase
of 100 percent from the second half of 2004.
“Many current threats are motivated by profit and desire to perpetrate
criminal acts such as identity theft, extortion and cheating through fraudulent
offers. It affects the bandwidth and speed of the network. Companies need to
be careful in keeping their IT systems updated with the latest security patches
and solutions, said Parijat Chakraborty, Head, User Research, IDC India.
“Today, information is the currency of business and
it has become invaluable. Organisations continue to depend on information to
grow, and they need to ensure that data that travels through their IT systems
remains secure and available 24x7,” said Steven Leonard, Senior Vice-president,
Asia Pacific and Japan, Symantec. “As a company, our mission is to help
customers counter the unprecedented level of risks they face daily, irrespective
of whether dealing with malicious code, a natural disaster or simply a hardware
failure.”
Administrators these days have more data to manage, less time to perform routine
system maintenance, and run data centres that are less tolerant than ever to
system outages. “As e-mail becomes the primary form of communication for
most organisations, the challenge is to put in place a proactive strategy for
ensuring the security and availability of e-mail traffic across the network,”
noted Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director, Sales, Symantec India.
| Key findings of the Symantec-IDC survey |
IT-enabled Services (ITeS), Business
Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Call Centres reported the highest usage of
security software solutions, and over 80 percent had a security policy in
place. Protection of hard disk, network integrity and e-mail and attachments
were the three most important reasons stated for the use of security solutions.
- Organisations in New Delhi that led the
way with the highest security awareness level—93 percent—said
that they had a security policy in place. They are followed by Mumbai
at 63 percent and Chennai at 62 percent.
- Some 62 percent of organisations conduct
regular security audits. Among the verticals, 70 percent of companies
in the ITeS/BPO/Call Centres segment have conducted an information security
audit closely followed by Manufacturing and Services at 64 percent.
- The Life Sciences segment had the highest
incidence of virus attacks in the past year at 83 percent, followed
by Manufacturing at 69 percent. The incidence of attacks is the highest
in Hyderabad at 88 percent and Mumbai at 83 percent; these are the same
cities that report a high level of free software usage for security
purposes.
- Indian mid-sized companies are maturing
on storage usage. Secondary storage—tape drive and media used for
back-up and archiving purposes—is used by more than 60 percent
of the companies, both in the head offices and branch offices. However,
the adoption of direct attached storage, network attached storage and
storage area network is primarily found in the head offices of these
organisations.
- With the increased adoption of better
storage solutions, the concern for security is also increasing among
companies. Some 59 percent said that they would consider security applications
during storage implementation. It clearly demonstrates that Indian mid-sized
companies are becoming more aware of the need for a proactive approach
to both managing and securing the integrity of their data.
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