Here are the results of a study made by data protection company SafeNet

Feb 13, 2013 21:31 GMT  ·  By

Data protection solutions provider SafeNet has released the results of a study based on the responses of 230 security professionals from the United States. The report focuses on security strategies, technologies, investments and data breach concerns.

74% of respondents believe that network perimeter defenses are effective against data breaches, but 31% of them have admitted that their network perimeter defenses were penetrated in the past.

Interestingly, 20% of them are uncertain if their networks have been breached.

While most of the experts (95%) have said their companies have maintained or increased their investment in network perimeter security, over half of them feel that the organizations they work for don’t spend enough on ensuring that their systems are properly protected.

The figures also show that only 19% of professionals are confident that the security industry is capable of detecting and preventing breaches, while 49% are unconvinced, and 33% have become less confident.

It appears that high-profile cyberattacks have made many companies rethink their data security strategies, but 66% of respondents still believe they will suffer a data breach within the next three years.

Unfortunately, many have admitted that their companies are investing in the wrong security technologies. As a result, if their perimeters are breached, in 59% of cases the data they store would not be safe.

“While the overall IT and threat landscape has dramatically changed over the past several years, the security industry has been slow to adapt to those changes. Today’s threat landscape demands a mindset that moves beyond attempting to achieve absolute breach prevention,” said Dave Hansen, president and chief executive officer of SafeNet.

“Organizations must accept that a breach will happen and implement strategies such as encryption that secure the breach by making the data useless to anyone but its rightful owner,” he added.

“Threats to vital infrastructure and high-value data have outgrown traditional breach prevention strategies, such as network perimeter security and anti-malware, and it is clear that maintaining the same approach of years past is antiquated and dangerous.”