Survey finds two thirds at Infosec see increase in IT attacks

Almost two thirds of attendees at the Infosec 2014 conference in London believe that the frequency of attacks on IT infrastructure has increased over the past year, according to a new survey by HP.

Of the 150 people at the event, 60 per cent noticed a surge in attacks over the last 12 months.

They found that the biggest security risk was phishing and social engineering at 18.1 per cent, followed by attacks for financial gain at 17.1 per cent, and staff inadvertently breaching security at 16.3 per cent.

Malware and viruses only came in fourth place at 16 per cent, while mobile devices were deemed inherently risky at 13.1 per cent.

Existing infrastructure vulnerabilities came in at 9.9 per cent, followed by cyber attacks by hacktivist groups like Anonymous at 9.6 per cent.

Protection by policy

Those surveyed found that the biggest improvement to information security was policy implementation, which got 47.9 per cent of the vote.

Kit purchases came in second at 24.8 per cent, followed by service purchases at 14.5 per cent. The remaining 12.7 per cent selected "other."

"Once again we see that many organisations are feeling increasingly threatened by attacks on their infrastructure and that awareness of the adversary and what we face is growing," said Tony Caine, VP and GM of APJ & EMEA at HP Enterprise Security Products.

"The data shows that experts feel implementing new security policies along with new security kit helps to tackle these. Compliance is just the bare minimum."

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