UK Companies Found With Insufficient Online Security

The UK-based Bell Micro, a company for value-added distribution, announced on May 29, 2008 that about 41% of UK enterprises admitted their organization continues to allow employees to access sites of social networking, while 65% said their mailboxes had received fake e-mails supposedly from reputable sources like banks.

Bell Micro's new Director of Security, Steve Browell said that this trend demonstrates that end-users are still not properly configuring or deploying Web filters, as reported by Vnunet on May 29, 2008.

In addition, 62% of organizations admitted their IT department would not able to find out if any of their employees was downloading data from a server and saving it onto a computer, laptop, CD or USB sticks, whereas 73% said that they were ready to disclose their name, password and phone number to participate in a lottery draw for something like an iPhone.

Browell said that although everyone felt that nobody was regarding data security sincerely, but if that could be proved, it would show substance. He said that resellers could use the data to relate with their customers and to riddle the truth that such problems continue to exist while there was ample opportunity to correct it as well.

The officials at Bell Micro lashed companies for permitting access to social-networking Websites. According to them, each firm says that it has a web filter deployed but then they don't seem to apply it to stop access to such sites, which are perfect places to dump malware. Hence, reselling companies should ask their employees if they understand its consequences and examine the configurations of their filters for better protection.

The analysts also said that there is a considerable difference in disposition toward IT security between European countries. While businesses in France, Germany and Sweden tended to embrace a proactive approach, companies in UK are more reactive like applying patches.

Moreover, in international terms, Quocirca, a leading analyst company, revealed that 90% of worldwide organizations that find themselves victim of computer hacking engage in outsourcing over 40% of their software. In spite of that, security seems to get less attention for 60% of these organizations that outsource.

Related article: US Passes Baton to Asia in Spam Relay

» SPAMfighter News - 6/18/2008