Lack of security awareness limits business initiatives

According to a survey conducted by Dell, security concerns are limiting the adoption of cloud and mobility solutions throughout organizations. While the C-suite is more invested in data security than in the past, IT teams feel executives are still not allocating the energy or resources needed to properly address data security challenges.

The report found that a lack of investment in streamlined technologies and a shortage of talent are both barriers to fine-tuning data security programs. The majority of decision makers (58%) believe that their organization is adversely affected by the shortage of trained security professionals in the industry. 69% of decision makers still view data security as a burden on their time and budget. Still, nearly half (49%) of respondents believe they need to spend more time securing their data in the next five years than they are today. 76% believe their solutions would be less burdensome if provided through a single vendor.

The report showed that respondents remain highly concerned about malware, despite the fact that most have anti-malware solutions in place. Nearly three in four (73%) decision makers are somewhat to very concerned about malware and advanced persistent threats.

Concern over malware threats is highest in the United States (31% very concerned), France (31% very concerned) and especially India (56% very concerned) – while it’s a lesser concern in Germany (11% very concerned) and Japan (12% very concerned). Only one in five respondents are very confident in their ability to protect against sophisticated malware attacks. Respondents are more worried about spear phishing attacks (73% are concerned) than any other breach method.

Results show that the majority of mid-market companies (65%) are holding back plans to make their workforce more mobile for security reasons with 67% hesitant to introduce a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) program. While 82% of decision makers have attempted to limit data access points to enhance security, 72% of decision makers believe that knowing where data is accessed will make their data protection measures more effective. 69% of respondents say they are still willing to sacrifice individual devices to protect their company against a data breach, yet 57% of respondents are still concerned about the quality of encryption used by their company.

With more employees using public cloud services like Box and Google Drive in the workplace, decision makers are not confident in their ability to control risks posed by these applications. Nearly four in five respondents are concerned with uploading critical data to the cloud, and 58% are actually more concerned than they were a year ago. 38% of decision makers have restricted access to public cloud sites within their organization due to security concerns and 57% of decision makers who are current cloud users, and 45% of those planning to use public cloud platforms, will rely heavily on cloud vendors to provide security.