Executive involvement boosts organisational confidence in IT security, Dell finds

Despite broad progress around the introduction of new security tools and architectures, IT decision-makers still see security as the biggest barrier to increasing their investment in mobility, cloud computing and big-data technologies, according to new research from Dell.

The company's latest Global Technology Adoption Index (GTAI), which included 2038 IT decision-makers at organisations in 11 countries, found that 97 percent of respondents had or were planning to use cloud technologies and nearly half have implemented a mobility strategy.

Fully 52 percent of respondents felt that security concerns were still the biggest barrier to cloud adoption, with 44 percent saying the same about mobility initiatives and 35 percent expressing similar concerns about big-data efforts.

Executive involvement in security planning was tied to the lack of confidence in IT security, with just 28 percent of organisations reporting that they had a C-suite mindset that was “fully engaged with security initiatives”.

Within those organisations where executives took a stronger leadership position around security, the situation was improved: in organisations that are very confident of their security infrastructure, 84 percent reported that senior leaders were fully or somewhat engaged with the organisation's security.

By contrast, where organisations were not confident in their security, just 43 percent of senior leaders were engaged in security initiatives.

Concerns about mobile security continued to hold back many organisations' mobility initiatives, with half of respondents citing the “risk of data breach from lost devices and unprotected wireless networks” as a major concern and 44 percent reporting “fear of a security breach”.

Improper use of mobile devices was flagged by respondents as a key mobile-security issue – but just 32 percent of respondents had formal policies managing bring your own device (BYOD) initiatives within the organisation.

Cost (40 percent) and complexity (36 percent) were the next most significant mobility risks.

Read more: The week in security: WireLurker penetrates Apple defences, SMBs face shadow-IT threat

Concerns about big-data investments were also noted, with 61 percent of respondents saying they had big data repositories that could be analysed using new techniques but 43 percent noting that they would keep the security risk of those investments contained by leveraging private clouds. Some 24 percent said they would build big-data initiatives on traditional servers to minimise security risk, while just 11 percent said they were confident to use public clouds to store their big data repositories.

This article is brought to you by Enex TestLab, content directors for CSO Australia.

Tags BYODEnex TestLabDellC-SuiteIT Securitywireless networkscloud adoptionsecurity riskCSO Australiadirectors for CSO Australiabig-dataIT decision-makersGTAImobility risks

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