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Security

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   Security Breaches

According to CompTIA's 8th Annual Trends in Information Security study, information security remains a top concern of senior IT professionals, with 49% rating it an upper half organization priority, compared to 35% two years ago. Additionally, nearly 7 in 10 respondents indicate the severity of security threats their organization faces is on the rise. Reasons for this increase vary from new threats to new vulnerabilities, compounded by human and technology shortcomings.

Thirty-four percent of respondents believe the internal security threat at their organization has increased as a result of the economic recession. Layoffs, low morale and desperation may lead otherwise honest employees to cross the line. The greatest concern comes from departing employees having knowledge of logins, access points and other vulnerabilities. More than half of organizations have already or plan to implement new security policies or procedures to address the situation of employees leaving the organization voluntarily or through dismissal.

Like many IT investments, executives often wrestle with the return on investment of security expenditures. Quantifying the number of security breaches thwarted due to a particular hardware or software investment or staff training is not always possible. The data suggests expenditures on security software and IT staff training yields the highest perceived ROI among IT executives.

CompTIA's 8th Annual Trends in Information Security study was conducted among 400 U.S. IT and business executives during July 2010. The international phase of the study covered the countries of Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Mexico, South Africa and United Kingdom.

CompTIA members can read more security research here