Unauthorised Applications pose a threat

Most IT managers accept the limitations of existing security systems for want of a better way. 79% of IT managers admitted they live in fear of unknown IT threats (zero-day attacks) with no real proactive way to defend against them.

Despite the fact that IT professionals are clearly concerned about new attacks, 73% of respondents reported that their IT infrastructure still relies on traditional and reactive anti-virus systems. The protection offered by these systems is limited by the need for signature and patching updates. It is during this window of vulnerability that the malware writers now focus their attention, leveraging the key weakness of these reactive security systems, thus turning them into part of the problem rather than part of a solution.

The key findings of the survey were:
- Unauthorised applications are a problem for most organisations: 90% of IT security professionals consider unauthorised applications to be problematic.
- The majority consider signature updating and patching to be more complicated than it should be: 55% if IT Managers admitted that it causes problems of some sort for the IT team on a regular basis.

“It is clear that today’s IT professionals are having to rely upon the same old reactive methods to detect and stop malware attack. This despite the fact that we know malware is becoming increasingly stealthy and being designed specifically to subvert reactive software such as anti-virus to remain undetected.” “Proactive protection is the only effective means of stopping all malware in its tracks, without the need for signature update. As unknown threats continue to increase, solutions that depend on first knowing the threat are therefore inherently flawed.”