Most Companies Adopting Web 2.0 Unaware of Risks

While most of the commercial undertakings are welcoming the use of Web 2.0, enterprise IT units are not willing to face the consequences of the threats it poses, according to a new research.

A large number of IT professionals are not only unaware of the risks related to the threats from Web 2.0 but they also lack consistent policies and adequate user training to deal with them, says the security report by Forrester Research. Secure Computing, an enterprise gateway security company, commissioned the research.

While surveying 153 IT experts, Forrester Research found that 96% were regular users of Web 2.0 technologies whose companies also found the technology valuable. But the problem is although they adopted Web 2.0, they did not foresee the security hurdles. 90% of those surveyed said they were least worried about the ensuing threats.

The report shows that a blind spot exists in Web 2.0 security. About 90% of businesses are still installing security solutions meant to prevent the old kind of attacks, the Vice President of product marketing at Secure Computing, Ken Rutsky, told TechNewsWorld.

Today, threats from viruses, phishing, botnets and spyware plague the Internet - all that threaten business operations, said principal analyst Chenxi Wang for Forrester. InformationWeek reported Wang's written statement on October 3, 2007. Wang further added, Forrester's study indicated that companies, in general, respond to the new generation threats rather slowly and do not know much about the necessary security measures. Also, most companies only use signature scanning and URL filtering to protect their Web, whereas malware developers now primarily use the Web to propagate their threats. Effective protection of the Web therefore should now be a top priority.

The study also noticed a discrepancy between concerns related to security threats and the level at which organizations are equipped to deal with them.

While 97% of respondents considered their companies equipped to deal with Web-borne threats, 68% said improvement could be made. In an important query to the surveyed individuals as to how frequently they encountered malware attacks, 79% reported they experienced them more than rarely, with spyware and viruses leading the trend.

Related article: Most Malware Use File Packing To Escape Detection

» SPAMfighter News - 10/17/2007