[ISN] Survey: Half Of Windows Vista Adoption Driven By Security

From: InfoSec News (alerts@private)
Date: Tue May 22 2007 - 22:17:31 PDT


http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199701141

By Sharon Gaudin
InformationWeek
May 22, 2007 

Half of IT managers who are either testing or installing Microsoft 
Windows Vista this year said the operating system's security 
enhancements are the primary driver fueling the move, according to a new 
study.

Amplitude Research's fourth annual Enterprise Security Survey, which was 
commissioned by VanDyke Software, surveyed 300 IT professionals -- 217 
of whom are contemplating or moving to Vista. Of those looking to 
Microsoft's newest, and highly touted, operating system, 14% said they 
are eager to use User Account Control (UAC), which is a new security 
feature designed to limit individual machines' administrative 
permissions in order to ward off malware attacks.

Another 22% of respondents said they were upgrading to Windows Vista to 
take advantage of overall "improved functionality."

The survey, which was geared to find out what keeps IT administrators up 
at night with worry, also showed that file transfers are a greatly 
increasing concern. Secure file transfer showed the greatest growth of 
all the managers' concerns, becoming one of their top three security 
concerns. Thirty-one percent of managers named it a top fear this year, 
compared with 13% last year.

About two-thirds of the 300 survey respondents reported using a secure 
method of file transfer when exchanging sensitive data internally 
between remote offices. That number is up significantly from 52% in 
2006. The study also showed that three in four reported using a secure 
method of file transfer at least sometimes when exchanging sensitive 
data with customers, vendors, suppliers, and other third parties.

Keeping virus definitions up to date is another major concern, with 45% 
of managers citing it. Forty percent worry about monitoring intrusions, 
while 42% are concerned with patching systems and 47% fret about secure 
remote access.

Actually, securing remote access came in as the No. 1 concern, with 24% 
giving it their top rating, up from 15% the year before.

"The survey findings correlate to what we see happening in the field," 
said Jeff P. Van Dyke, president and founder of VanDyke Software, in a 
written statement. "Finally, the lines have crossed with steadily 
increasing adoption of Secure Shell and a significant decline in the use 
of Telnet to configure network devices."


_____________________________________________________
Attend Black Hat USA, July 28-August 2 in Las Vegas, 
the world's premier technical event for ICT security 
experts. Featuring 30 hands-on training courses and 
90 Briefings presentations with lots of new content 
and new tools. Network with 4,000 delegates from 
70 nations.   Visit product displays by 30 top
sponsors in a relaxed setting. Rates increase on 
June 1 so register today. http://www.blackhat.com



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Tue May 22 2007 - 22:27:48 PDT