Federal IT Face Cyber Attacks Daily

IT professionals struggle to cope with or prevent cyber security problems a minimum of once every seven days, finds a new study poll by CDW-G, the federal wing of CDW (a computer security firm in America). The firm, which surveyed IT professionals of 300 civilian, defense and federal departments, aimed at detecting the most serious Internet dangers confront by them daily.

The top problems are malware, according to 33% of respondents, inappropriate network use or activity by employees (25%), supervision of authorized, distantly-placed user access (25%), and encrypted data (23%). The report from the poll, which was conducted during September 2009, states that malware along with remote access represents the biggest worries.

According to the research, 31% of respondents stated that their company confronted an Internet security incident comprising inappropriate employee access, external threat, malware or other attack every day. Most survey participants said that the frequency at which these problems occurred was identical or slightly more compared to that of 2008, while their seriousness was almost identical.

Moreover, the seriousness of external attacks is greater than the internal ones, according to Government IT professionals. Defense agencies responded that cyber-wars backed by the states were the greatest of all external attacks confronting them while, according to civilian agencies, they were software vulnerabilities and hackers.

Andy Lausch, Vice President of Federal ales, CDW-G, has stated that cyber security wasn't merely a technology problem, but also a cultural and management confrontation faced by federal organizations, as reported by Fierce Government on November 10, 2009.

Lausch said that federal IT pros were dealing with cyber-security warfare from various angles, and they required help from the federal managers, senior staff and employees.

Federal employees are still the main cause for security flaws because of their careless online activity along with failure to comply with organization policy, finds the research. It also finds that across civilian and defense organizations, 66% of those surveyed caught employees conducting irrelevant Web-surfing during 2008, while 44% found their workforce noted passwords on office stick-notes that could become public.

Hence, according to Lausch, Federal IT is stressing on greater end-user awareness to minimize both internal and external cyber threats.

Related article: Federal Secret Service Investigates Security Breach on Municipal Court Site

» SPAMfighter News - 11/23/2009