Astaro IDs future IT security trends 25 November, 2007 By Vanessa Ho

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"Many of them have WLAN security [but] vulnerability scanning and web application are still emerging and customers are interested in expanding security in these areas they currently have not invested in," said Udo Kerst, senior product manager with Astaro. "The overall investment is probably not as high for these new technologies as they have for already established technologies, but the relative increase will be high next year."

Astaro surveyed 2,800 IT professionals across diverse industries such as healthcare, education and financial services, as well as its own channel partners. One hundred per cent of those surveyed said they relied on firewalls as their first line of defense against outside attacks. Anti-virus (at almost 92 per cent) and anti-spam scanners (90 per cent) were also listed among the top three security technologies in use, closely followed by VPN products (81 per cent) and intrusion protection systems (74 per cent).

Other trends identified by Astaro included 70 per cent of respondents were concerned with preventing unauthorized users from accessing the corporate network or confidential data. A similar number of respondents (72 per cent) noted that keeping an overview of possible security weak points will be the biggest challenge for IT departments over the next five years. Other top concerns included protection against worms and hacker attacks.

To address these concerns, Kerst recommended that companies look at the new threats and find technology that is defending against them. But, he added that it would be hard for companies of all sizes to look at all these different technologies as it can add up to a lot of point products to address specific threats. "Our goal is to have an all-in-one single device to cover all these threats to protect their networks."

As well, Kerst advised that companies establish security policies to address their concerns, as technology can't always protect against these threats.

Another finding of the Astaro survey noted that 22 per cent of respondents were already using e-mail encryption, and over 67 per cent said that they were worried about how to prevent leakage of confidential company data, the survey suggested that the use of e-mail encryption is poised to rise significantly in the near future.

Some examples of other new technologies that Kerst recommended were encryption for voice traffic, firewall for mobile devices and instant messaging and peer-to-peer content filtering.

"Threats have been evolving for some years and as more and more new threats are arriving from the Internet . . . customers have to look into more and more technology," said Kerst.