Cyber-Ark Posts Results

DEDHAM, Mass. -- Cyber-Ark® Software, the information security software company that develops and markets digital vaults for securing and managing highly-sensitive information within and across global enterprise networks, today announces the surprising results of its 2006 Privileged Password Survey. Privileged passwords are the non-personal passwords that exist in virtually every device or software application in an enterprise, such as root on a UNIX server, Administrator on a Windows workstation, and Cisco Enable on a Cisco device.

A surprising set of statistics

Completed by more than 140 IT professionals, the 2006 Privileged Password Survey reveals that privileged passwords are far more common in enterprises than previously thought: approximately one-half of all enterprises contain more privileged passwords than individual ones. Second, although these privileged passwords provide “super-user” system access, the survey exposes that up to 42 percent are never updated, a frightening prospect in today’s environment of increased audits and hacker attacks. In fact, half of the IT professionals surveyed reveal that they’re concerned about audits, and 6 out of 10 state that their organization has been hacked.

Often, the reason privileged passwords are rarely updated is a simple one: many enterprises still manually change these key passwords.

Approximately half of all enterprises have more privileged passwords than personal ones

According to the 2006 Enterprise Privileged Password Survey, the typical enterprise contains:

“Often organizations believe that because they have a small number of IT administrators, they can’t have many privileged passwords,” says Adam Bosnian, Vice President of Products, Strategy and Sales for Cyber-Ark Software. “The truth is that privileged passwords come pre-loaded onto virtually every piece of hardware and software in an enterprise and are therefore extremely common. Simply put, these super-user passwords are the keys to your kingdom, and yet they are often left unguarded.”

Cyber-Ark Software Ltd.