GEC NEWS WIREAccording to Fortinet Global Survey of IT leaders, insufficient wireless security is a concern for almost all (92%) of the CIOs polled
Information Technology decision makers (ITDMs) believe wireless networks to be the most vulnerable element of the IT infrastructure, according to a new survey from Fortinet. Nearly half (49%) of respondents ranked wireless networks as most exposed from a security standpoint, in contrast to just 29% for the core network.
The findings come from an independent survey of over 1,490 IT decision makers at 250+ employee organizations around the world. All respondents were sourced from independent market research company Lightspeed GMI’s online panel.
According to the survey, wireless networks are ranked as the most vulnerable IT infrastructure, with the highest proportion of ITDMs (49%) placing it in their top two. Respondents positioned wireless as significantly more vulnerable than core networking infrastructure, with just 29% of ITDMs ranking this highly. Databases (25%), applications (17%) and storage (11%) infrastructures were considered amongst the least susceptible from a security standpoint.
In addition, 37% of global ITDMs polled do not have the most basic wireless security measure of authentication in place. A significant 29% and 39% of enterprises respectively, overlook firewall and anti-virus security functions when it comes to wireless strategies.
Other security measures deemed critical to core infrastructure protection, such as IPS (deployed by 41%), application control (37%) and URL filtering (29%), play a part in even fewer wireless deployments.
When considering the future direction of their wireless security strategies, the majority of respondents said they would maintain focus on the most common security features – firewall & authentication, while demand for more security is emerging with 23% prioritizing complementary technologies – IPS, anti-virus, application control and URL filtering – to guard against the full extent of the threat landscape.
