RSA Survey: Only 2 Percent Of Organizations Have Suffered 'Serious' Incident Due To Mobile Use

PRESS RELEASE

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – July 28, 2010 – RSA' Conference (www.rsaconference.com), the world’s leading information security conference and exposition, today released the results of its recent survey of security professionals regarding issues like cloud computing, mobile devices and social networking. The final study includes responses from C-level professionals, security engineers, analysts and architects tasked with weighing in on security technology investments within their respective organizations.

While mobile and Facebook security attacks provide hot topics with the media, as a whole, respondents communicated no knowledge of these types of attacks affecting the overall productivity and safety of their organizations to date. Close to all respondents (93.2%) answered “Yes” when asked if allowing employees to connect their personal mobile devices to the corporate network poses a security threat to their organization, but only 1.8% reported a “serious incident” as a result of an employee’s mobile device use. These percentages followed a similar pattern when respondents answered Facebook related questions as well, with 83.6% considering social media sites a security concern, while only 1.9% identified a social network attack or leak as having directly affected their organization.

In an attempt to uncover some of the concerns at the root of the high number of respondents designating cloud computing as a major security priority in the year ahead, RSA Conference also questioned respondents in regards to their company’s cloud timeline, type of cloud services expected to be used and number one overall security concern associated with moving data to the cloud.

The survey found that 82.6% of respondents expect their organizations to move at least some of their business processes to the cloud over the next 12 months, with 84.1% noting that they expect SaaS to be their cloud model. When considering their number one cloud security concern, close to half of all respondents (46.2%) chose “controlling access to data,” with 28.8% selecting “compliance.” Conversely, “data assurance” and “identity brokers” were of lesser concern, with only 7.6% of total respondents choosing these categories.

With over half (56.9%) of the total number of respondents anticipating that their 2011 security budgets would increase from the previous year, the security concerns associated with moving to a cloud model appear to be backed by accompanying technological investment.

When asked what technology investments were the highest priorities for their organizations over the next twelve months, in addition to cloud computing (49.2% of respondents), respondents cited application security (47.7%), endpoint security (44.6%) and authentication (41.5%), with mobile wireless security also being noted as crucial to about one third of respondents (32.3%).

The majority of these respondents identified themselves as being employed by either small organizations (1 – 19 employees) or major corporations (10,000 or more employees), indicating that while technology solutions may vary depending upon the size of the enterprise, overarching security concerns remain consistent.

“What we’ve discovered is that whether you’re a global company or an emerging start up with five employees, your overall security concerns are the same. It’s how you address these concerns through technology that varies from a budget and resources perspective,” said Sandra Toms LaPedis, Area Vice President and General Manager of RSA Conference. “We continue to find the real world experiences of security professionals invaluable as we develop the agenda for the RSA Conference each year.”

About RSA Conference

RSA Conference helps drive the global information security agenda with annual events in the U.S., Europe and Japan. Throughout its 20-year history, RSA Conference consistently attracts the world’s best and brightest in the field, creating opportunities to learn about information security’s most important issues through face-to-face and online interactions with peers, luminaries and emerging and established companies. As information security professionals work to stay ahead of ever-changing security threats and trends, they turn to RSA Conference for a 360-degree view of the industry. RSA Conference seeks to arm participants with the knowledge they need to remain at the forefront of the information security business. More information on events, online programming and the most up-to-date news pertaining to the information security industry can be found at www.rsaconference.com.