Astaro Reports on IT Security Trends

BURLINGTON, Mass. -- More than 65 percent of IT departments have identified WLAN security, vulnerability scanning, and web application firewalls as additional security investments to be made during the next fiscal year, according to the results of a global market survey conducted by Astaro Corporation, specialists in unified threat management (UTM) security appliances.

Over 2,800 IT professionals, representing diverse industries including manufacturing, healthcare, education and financial services, as well as Astaro’s channel partners participated in a market-trend survey on topics ranging from IT security tools, managed services, key challenges and planned investments.

Today, 100% of those surveyed said they relied on firewalls as their first line of defense against outside attacks. Anti-virus (91.5%) and anti-spam scanners (90%) are also listed among the top three security technologies in use, closely followed by VPN products (81%) and intrusion protection systems (74%).

The survey found that 70 percent of respondents are concerned with preventing unauthorized users from accessing the corporate network or confidential data. A similar number of respondents (72 percent) responded that keeping an overview of possible security weak points will be the biggest challenge for IT departments over the next five years. Other top concerns include protection against worms and hacker attacks.

“Today, companies are finding that they can’t rely on the basic network security they had in place just a few years ago”, said Jan Hichert, CEO at Astaro Corporation. “Network administrators are continuously faced with the task of updating and adding layers of protection in order to keep their networks secure against the latest threats”. “Astaro’s content inspection framework allows us to integrate best of breed, cutting-edge, security technology seamlessly into our security offering, giving Astaro users the piece of mind that they have the most up-to-date security tools available.”

Astaro Corp.