[ISN] Report: IT, Security Departments Not Seeing Eye To Eye On Threats To The Business

http://www.darkreading.com/security/vulnerabilities/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212300005

By Kelly Jackson Higgins
DarkReading
Dec 07, 2008

A new report underscores a major disconnect between IT and security 
groups when it comes to what most threatens their organizations.

The Ponemon Institute's 2008 Security Mega Trends Survey, which was 
commissioned by Lumension, reveals just how far apart IT departments and 
security groups are when it comes to what they perceive as the biggest 
threats to their data today and in the next 12 to 24 months. While 
outsourcing risks are at the top of IT managers' worries, data breaches 
and cybercrime are the biggest worries for security.

More specifically, half of the IT managers said that outsourcing was a 
high or very high security risk to their organizations today and in the 
next one to two years; 44 percent also pointed to data breaches as a 
comparable risk today, while 40 percent expect them to be so in the next 
one to two years. Security professionals, meanwhile, ranked data 
breaches and cybercrime higher: Sixty-six percent consider data breaches 
high or very high risks today, while 65 percent rank them as such for 
the next year to two years. In addition, 65 percent say cybercrime is a 
high or very high risk to their organizations today, while 77 percent 
say it will be in the next 12 to 24 months. That's in contrast to the IT 
side, where 47 percent consider it a high risk today, and 49 percent 
expect that it will be in the next year to two years.

"We see a big disconnect between IT and security in their thoughts about 
data breaches and how risky that is to a business," says Pat Clawson, 
CEO of Lumension.

But the most disturbing disconnect was in actual breaches. While 92 
percent of security professionals say their organizations had suffered a 
cyberattack, only 55 percent of IT staffers said the same, while 32 
percent said they were uncertain. "That just floored me," Clawson says. 
"That shows the silos" that still exist, he says.

[...]


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