Lumension Survey Claims US Not Prepared to Face Cyber Attacks

According to a latest Lumension Security Inc commissioned Clarus Research Group survey, around three-fourth of federal IT administrators who work in National Defense and Security departments said that there is "high" possibility for a cyber attack in 2011 by some foreign country, as per the news published by the dark READING on April 6, 2010.

Security purveyor Lumension, from 18-26 February 2010, surveyed 201 IT professionals from the executive level to operations.

The survey revealed that most federal IT professionals believe that the U.S. is in jeopardy from a major cyber attack, and the country is ill prepared to fight it. One-third of these surveyed candidates say that within past 12 months, they have already gone through such a cyber attack.

42% of these respondents think that the ability of the U.S. government to thwart or deal with such an attack is just fair to poor.

Ed Brice, Senior Vice President of worldwide marketing at Lumension, said that the research has clearly proved the belief of advanced and persistent threats on critical infrastructure, as reported by Information Week Government on April 6, 2010.

49% of the respondents stated they consider suspicious insiders or federal employees as the biggest risk to the IT security. According to 64% of the respondents, growing sophistication and a rise in the volume of cyber attacks constitute the top IT security risk.

Just 6% of respondents said that overall ability of the federal government to deal with possible cyber attacks is excellent.

According to Matt Mosher, Vice President of sales at Scottsdale, Arizona-based Lumension, the results highlights that how less the government has disclosed about the extent of the cyber challenges being faced by it, as reported by ComputerWorld on April 7, 2010.

However, the survey results mirror the increasing apprehension within the industry over the cyber attacks coming from abroad, with the main motive of stealing commercial trades, military or government data, or intellectual property, just like the recent hacking incident wherein a felon from China thieved secret, confidential data from the Government of India. Reportedly, three main weapons are mainly used against Indian networks- mapping of networks, key loggers and BOTS.

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» SPAMfighter News - 4/17/2010