Survey: 58% of IT executives feel safe from breaches

A market survey by New York-based SecureAuth on password use and access control of 500 senior-level information technology executives found that 58 percent felt confident in their company’s protection from security breaches, but 39 percent use password-only authentication measures, a method SecureAuth said is regularly hacked due to the lack of security.
SecureAuth said the survey also found that 62 percent of executives are most concerned that their own employees will compromise their network. SecureAuth sponsored the survey in collaboration with SC Magazine and recently published an analysis of the results in its market focus report.
“We found the results of this survey both eye-opening and a bit disappointing. Despite numerous high-profile cyber-attacks this year that exploited compromised passwords, many businesses are simply not taking the necessary precautions, such as deploying adaptive and two-factor authentication. We hope the survey results will encourage more organizations to evaluate their access control strategies and take recommended measures to improve their security to better protect their user’s identities and detect bad actors in their environment,” SecureAuth CEO Craig Lund said.
In response to questions regarding the future of each executive’s network security, 63 percent said that their company plans on changing from, or enhancing, the password-only model.
SecureAuth said that process, however, will take at least two years to put in place, which leaves them vulnerable for some time. Looking five years into the future, 19 percent of responders said their firm’s main method of IT security would be passwords, tokens and biometrics, while 18 percent will use two-factor authentication and 16 percent don’t know what the status of network security will be for their organization.

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