Cyber risks and attacks have grown significantly in the past two years, and are expected to grow further in the next two years, according to Symantec's 2009 Managed Security in the Enterprise Report.
Nearly all (98%) of targeted enterprises experienced loss, with 46% experiencing downtime, 31% experiencing theft of customer or employee personally identifiable information, and 25% have had corporate data stolen.
As a result, 61% of US enterprises are adopting managed security services. The study is based on surveys of 1 000 IT managers in US and European enterprises, in January 2009.
Jeff Ogden, senior director of consulting at Symantec, says: “Cyber security is a growing problem, yet organisations are having trouble addressing the problem. Managed security services provide a way for many organisations to close the gap and ensure that their information and assets are protected.”
He continues: “The statistics of this survey suggest that South Africa could be equally if not more at risk. Telecommunications infrastructure is still developing, with new licences and new ISPs entering the market, as well as a growing Internet user community.
“This exposes South Africa to more malicious activity as regulations are applied to new services. These factors can be added to the same stresses experienced by the surveyed nations - those of shrinking budgets and lack of manpower.”
Symantec states that the reasons cited by IT management to embrace managed security services include the ability to provide 24x7 coverage, lower overall costs, access to security expertise and an enhanced ability to mitigate security risks.
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