What’s the weakest link in Enterprise IT infrastructure?

“As advanced persistent attacks increasingly target multiple entry points, it’s not an oversight organisations should risk any longer."

When considering the future direction of their wireless security strategies, Maddison says the majority of respondents said they would maintain focus on the most common security features – firewall and authentication, while demand for more security is emerging with 23 percent prioritising complementary technologies – IPS, anti-virus, application control and URL filtering - to guard against the full extent of the threat landscape.

Insufficient wireless security

Of the ITDMs surveyed, 83 percent are concerned their existing wireless security is not sufficient, with CIOs reporting the highest level of concern at 92 percent.

Despite deploying the highest level of security of all the regions surveyed, ITDMs across APAC are the most concerned about their wireless security with 44 percent stating they are very concerned, in contrast to 30 percent in the Americas, and 20 percent in EMEA.

When asked to cite the risks of operating an unsecured wireless network, 48 percent of ITDMs considered loss of sensitive corporate and/or customer data as the biggest risk to their organisation.

According to Maddison, this was highest at 56 percent in APAC, in contrast to the Americas at 45 percent and EMEA 42 percent.

The next highest risk, industrial espionage, was cited by just 22 percent of ITDMs, followed by non-compliance to industry regulations (13 percent), with service interruption and damage to corporate reputation ranked equal last (9 percent).

Cloud Management

Wireless infrastructure governed by a premise-based controller is a thing of the past according to the findings, with on-site wireless controllers the least common form of management (28 percent).

“This trend for cloud-based management looks set to grow further, with only 12 percent of enterprise ITDMs refusing to trust the cloud for such critical management in the future,” Maddison adds.

“Of the cloud-ready respondents, 58 percent would want to use a private cloud infrastructure for wireless management and 42 percent would outsource to a third party managed services provider.

“14 percent of those considering outsourcing would only do so provided it is hosted in the same country, leaving 28 percent happy to embrace wireless management as a public cloud service regardless of geography.”

Finally, Maddison reports that nearly half (43 percent) of ITDMs polled provide guest access on their corporate wireless networks, with 13 percent of these organisations doing so without any controls whatsoever.

The most common form of guest security access on corporate wireless networks is a unique and temporary username and password (46 percent), ahead of a captive portal with credentials (36 percent).

Join the newsletter!

Or

Sign up to gain exclusive access to email subscriptions, event invitations, competitions, giveaways, and much more.

Membership is free, and your security and privacy remain protected. View our privacy policy before signing up.

Error: Please check your email address.

Tags networkFortinet

More about APACFortinetIPSTechnology

Show Comments
[]