Enterprises lack confidence in detecting and preventing threats

Emerging network security technologies are said to be addressing partial security threats within enterprises

Juniper Networks, the industry leader in network innovation, today announced the findings of a new target="_blank">Ponemon Institute report,which revealed that on average the security posture of Indian organizations surveyed is only 4.7 based on a scale of 10 being very effective.

target="_blank">The Efficacy of Emerging Network Security Technologies study, commissioned globally by Juniper Networks, shows securing web traffic is by far the most significant network security concern for the majority of organizations (64%) surveyed. However, less than half (46%) of respondents agreed that emerging network security technologies are not as effective as they should be and do not minimise attacks that bring down web applications or block unwarranted Internet traffic.

Security remains a major concern among organizations. The Ponemon Institute report reveals that even emerging network security technologies are not as effective as they should be. Companies need to review their security investment weighting, to assess whether the areas of greatest risk are receiving adequate attention and how they can address serious security threats, says Ravi Chauhan, managing director
India and SAARC, Juniper Networks

According to Larry Ponemon, Chairman & Founder, Ponemon Institute, respondents in Australia, China, India and
Japan share common challenges in securing their organizations networks such as web-based attacks and denial of service attacks. It is interesting to observe that despite being armed with emerging network security technologies, organizations in Asia Pacific find themselves to be sitting ducks for external threats. Organizations need to reflect on the shortcomings of their existing inside-out approach and seriously consider investing in a more comprehensive and holistic approach to network security in order to keep pace with a constantly evolving threat landscape, says Ponemon.

News Highlights:

This report uncovered key concerns and security threats that the 554 Indian IT and IT security professionals surveyed encountered within their organisation on a daily basis, with theft of their organizations intellectual property being one of the top security concerns that keeps them up at night.

Organizations believe that their emerging network technologies only partly address their security concerns

63 per cent of those surveyed say emerging network security technologies only address part of the security threats facing their organizations.

Majority of the respondents (55%) surveyed say that their organizations prioritize emerging network security technologies to curtail inside-out threats rather than a more holistic approach to security.

50 per cent say blocking of IP addresses in not an effective security measure.

Organizations are critical of their network security posture; rate them below average in detecting and preventing cyber attacks

On an average, respondents say the security posture of their organization is only 4.7 based on a scale of 10 being very effective.

52 per cent of the respondents say emerging network security technologies used by their organizations are dependent upon the in-house personnel who possess the knowledge and expertise to operate them effectively.

Respondents rated their organizations ability to quickly detect and prevent cyber-attacks as fair or 4.8 and 4.6, respectively, on a scale of 10 being excellent.

Efficacy of emerging network security technologies is influenced by the complexities involved in configuring policies for WAF

Only half of the respondents say their organizations use emerging network security technologies to heighten visibility to applications and the use of cloud services.

Respondents surveyed do not deploy or are unsure about Web Application Firewalls (61%)(WAFs) because they think it might affect revenues as the high incidence of false positives may block legitimate customer traffic.

Majority (79%) of the respondents say that is takes them at least a few weeks to configure and update rules or policies for WAF.

To effectively secure data centers, Juniper Networks believes companies must have knowledge of the attacking devices, not just the IP address, and quickly disseminate that intelligence across the data center and into the network. Juniper Networks can deliver this intelligence through its Junos Spotlight Secure global attacker intelligence service, which acts as the consolidation point for attacker and threat information, feeding real-time intelligence to Junipers security solutions. The first products to leverage Spotlight Secure security intelligence are target="_blank">Juniper Networks SRX Series Services Gateways.

The Ponemon Report surveyed 4,774 IT and IT security practitioners across the United States, Australia, United Kingdom, Germany, France, India, Japan, China and
Brazil. In
India, 554 IT and IT security practitioners took part in the 2013 study.