Computers As Vulnerable As Ever, Poll Shows

A new poll shows that respondents in the U.S. and China feel their computers are as vulnerable as last year, in spite of security advances.

Has computer security really improved? According to a new poll conducted by InformationWeek, 66% of U.S. respondents and 89% of Chinese respondentsdon’t believe so – they feel just as vulnerable to attacks as they did a year ago.   The poll, the 10^th global survey the publication has undertaken with Accenture, a consulting firm, asked questions about computer security to 1,101organizations in the United States and 1,991 in China.   The greatest problem wasseen to be “managing the complexity of security,” according to the global managing director of security practice for Accenture, Alastair MacWillson. He said that respondents often usedseveral different methods over overlapped but didn’t work straightforwardly.   “It’s like putting 20 locks on your door because you’re not comfortable that any of them works.”  The data revealed some interesting thoughts. Less than half of Chinese respondents and only one-third of those in the States cited prevented breaches as their biggest challenge, while just aquarter of those replying in the U.S. considered either unauthorized employee access to files or theft of data by outsiders among their greatest security priorities, in spite of highly publicizedrecent incidents.   Instead, in both countries, the biggest problems are seen as viruses and worms, spyware and malware, and spam.