Network Security News

Survey: One-fifth of IT managers cheat on security audits

Thursday, May 28, 2009

A new survey of IT managers and staff has found that 20 percent of IT security pros admit to fudging firewall audits in order to pass.

Released yesterday by an Israeli security vendor, the survey also discovered that 63 percent of companies only audit their firewalls every three months to a year, with 9 percent saying they never bother to check their firewalls at all. About half admitted that their firewall rules are "a mess."

The survey, conducted at the InfoSecurity Europe 2009 Conference in April, sampled 151 IT security professionals, many of whom come from multinational organizations and government departments employing 1,000 to 5,000 or more employees, the security company said.

Firewall audits typically only take a few days for the majority of companies. However, from a security perspective, infrequent audits can mean that many companies have firewalls that at best are running under par, the company said.

The survey also found that many companies are buying IT hardware off eBay, a trend the company was aware of anecdotally via its customers, it said. Almost a quarter of companies (24 percent) would buy from eBay if it meant that they would save money.