Budget and resources remain barriers to security

While businesses overwhelmingly recognise that security has the power to determine whether they live or die commercially, many IT departments remain frustrated by the strain it places on finances and human resources.

So says chip giant Intel who used a technology showcase event in Modena, Italy yesterday to unveil the results of a European IT manager survey.

More than half of those questioned rated IT security as their number one priority, but almost one third said that budgets weren't conducive to achieving aims. As a result, on average, IT staff members are spending 30 per cent of their available time ploughing through security-related tasks.

The bigger the business, the larger the IT resourcing/budget quandary, according to the research, which was conducted by Lightspeed. A quarter of enterprises with more than 500 employees claim that their IT people spend half of their time focused on security alone. And 41 per cent of respondents across the board suggested that they dedicate up to two hours trying to resolve each security incident.

Organisations still recognise the threats that come from within as being of note, but they now view external threats as more of a danger, according to the research.

More than half of all devices deployed in a standard enterprise IT environment are mobile, meaning the security considerations are becoming even more complex, according to Diane Bryant, vice president of digital enterprise group and general manager of the server platforms group at Intel.

"It used to be that hackers were motivated by notoriety but they have now become much more malicious in their attempts as they're motivated by financial gain. IT is continually looking for ways to secure the environment," she said.

"Anti-virus and anti-spyware is software based and running on the operating system so by definition it's vulnerable to attack. Users can also disable the security solution. They're in control of the security and manageability of the IT environment."

Intel is not immune to the security challenges faced by organisations around the globe, according to Don Byrne, the company's information risk and security manager.

With more than 97,000 employees spread across 144 sites in 60 countries, the chip giant operates a very distributed environment which only adds to the complexity surrounding the issue of security.

"Security is one of our biggest concerns in terms of what I focus on and look at. It creates its own challenges for Intel as well as everyone else," he said.

"Five years ago when I joined Intel security was [hard to manage]. Things were happening in our environment and it was difficult to maintain control. The policies we had were many and varied and we had to pull them together. We also have annual training that every user must take. We created [with our layered approach to security] an outer shell that is very robust and strong but we have a soft centre. People are what we call the new perimeter."

Byrne cited statistics from analyst Gartner which suggest three quarters of UK organisations will be successfully infected by financially-motivated, targeted malware by the end of this year. To ensure Intel doesn't suffer the ill effects of such dangers, the company is using its own vPro technology.

"We now know what assets we have so we can go out and patch them. vPro is a huge opportunity for us to have a more predictive enterprise as it allows us to isolate issues as they come along," he said.

"If we identify a machine where someone has come along and planted a root kit we can now quarantine it. The technology will also enable us to be much more efficient and effective and reduce costs," he said.

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