A new survey shows that nearly half of small companies in the United States believe that employees with a better knowledge of security issues and the part they play in a company's IT set-up would help to improve network security, while one in four say that management should be more aware of security issues and threats.

The survey of 455 IT executives at small and medium sized businesses in the United States found that 48 percent said that awareness on security issues among employees - the ‘weakest link’ - was a key factor that could lead to better overall security.

The research was carried out by polling company eMediaUSA on behalf of GFI Software, an international developer of network security, content security, and messaging software. The survey also found that employees are not the only people who need to be ‘educated.’ One in four IT executives want senior management to have a better understanding of security issues as this could have a bearing on the overall level of network security, and possibly, the range of security measures that could be implemented. Only 10 percent of SMBs said they would need more human resources, while 12 percent said network security would improve if they had larger budgets.

The survey shows that four in 10 SMBs feel their networks were not secure enough, with email viruses named as the biggest security threat. When asked about their major daily concerns, 71 percent of respondents cited downtime and tackling security issues, while 51 percent said user support was a daily concern.

From a financial perspective, the survey shows that spending on security measures was relatively low with 55 percent of SMBs saying they spent less than 10 percent of their IT budget on security. Thirty-eight percent said they allocated between 11 percent and 30 percent of the budget to security, while only 2 percent said they spent more than half of the budget on security.

Despite fewer resources being allocated to security, more than three quarters of respondents were satisfied (77 percent) and felt that their budget was enough to cover their security requirements. However, the survey also showed that just over 50 percent of respondents found it difficult to convince management to invest in security solutions. Only 15 percent said it was very easy.

According to the survey, the shopping list for SMBs in the United States in the coming six months includes network monitoring (31 percent), email management (29 percent), network scanning (26 percent), and anti-virus (26 percent) solutions. Fifteen percent plan to implement endpoint security or patch management (16 percent) solutions in the coming six months.

A copy of the results can be found at:
http://www.gfi.com/documents/rv/smbsurvey.pdf

•Date: 11th Dec 2007• Region: US •Type: Article •Topic: ISM
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