But the number of threats, and the tools to combat them, are only part of IT departments’ problems. According to a Forrester Consulting study recently commissioned by IBM, 63% of companies have understaffed IT departments, and slightly more than half cannot find employees with the right skills to keep the intruders out.
CMSWire.com recently spoke with IBM Enterprise Security Executive Davis Puzas about that company’s view of the battle.
“There’s a new threat every single day,” Puzas said, adding that “it’s vastly different from just a few years ago.”
He noted that IT departments “used to be reactive” to threats, but now — given the amount of data being communicated, the rapidly morphing kinds of threats, the widespread use of clouds and social media, and the number and kinds of devices being used — they “have to be pro-active.”
Puzas pointed out that “you can’t just sit there and react — you have to leapfrog in front of the threats.” CIOs are looking for a “better view” of their battleground, he said, and they are looking “to become more intelligent.”
Editor's Note: Read Next Generation Security, Protecting the Cloud and Mobile Devices
Mobile Security Experts ‘Just Not Available’
The Forrester study found that 68% of the surveyed 2400 North American and European enterprise decision makers had “little time for proactive and preventative projects due to existing responsibilities.”
Tools can help a company be pro-active, Puzas pointed out, but the intelligence arises from the people who implement them. “We find that many organizations are struggling to find the skills to take this on,” he said, and security professionals with the needed skills are now in heavy demand and “expensive to find, while budgets are tight.”
As one example, Puzas pointed to experts in mobile security, the most urgent battlefront for many IT departments. “They’re often just not available,” he said.
The Forrester study pointed out that “information security teams exist in an environment where ‘no’ is the wrong answer, yet the existing responsibilities absorb all of their time (68%) and new resources are hard to find (53%).” Given these conditions, the study said “consideration of security-as-a-service appears a clear and reasonable response.”
Security-as-a-Service
A 2011 report by Frost & Sullivan found similar evidence of the skills gap. It said that while half of its respondents reported having private clouds in place and 40 percent were using software-as-a-service, over 70 percent of professionals said new skills were needed to properly secure cloud-based technologies.
These kinds of stats, of course, represent continuing opportunities for IBM, given their strengths in security-oriented professional services and their managed services.
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Source : cmswire[dot]com
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