Survey also reveals 18% of respondents admitted to spending £20,000 or over on solutions that never get used
Dublin: edgescan has discovered that 39% of organisations purchase security solutions that end up in a cupboard, unused. The recent survey of IT security experts also revealed that some of these security tools cost their company significant sums, with 18% of respondents admitting that their organisation spent £20,000 or over on solutions that were never installed or integrated into their security system.
With security tools often costing in excess of £100,000, this highlights a fundamental problem with how IT security spending is managed.
Unsurprisingly, the main reason why these solutions end up in a cupboard is the organisation’s lack of manpower, specific skills or time to install it or integrate it with their existing systems (71%).
Security professionals admitted their time, too, was perhaps mismanaged: one third of respondents (32%) said that over six hours of their day is usually occupied by validating false positives, and another third (29.29%) said validating false positives takes up 3 to 6 hours of their day.
“The results of this survey suggest there is still a problem with how security is managed within organisations,” says Eoin Keary, CEO and founder of edgescan. “Employees’ time and resources are being wasted in an attempt to face an ever-growing threat landscape, but working harder and spending more does not necessarily mean that an organisation is more prepared in the event of an attack.”
“What organisations need is an IT security strategy,” Eoin continues. “Visibility over the entire attack surface can be achieved with managed services, that can provide monitoring and intelligence, while the internal security team can have more time to concentrate on what they consider to be higher functions.”
“With as many as 68% of the respondents to our survey rating their organisations’ visibility as just ‘average’, there clearly is a need for restructuring and optimising security operations,” Eoin concludes.