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Friday, August 06, 2004
Supervisors Say Subordinates Cause Most Security Screw-ups
Bosses point fingers at their workers when it comes to attacks on the company network, a study done by a U.K. research firm reported this week.
According to a survey of more than 1,200 small- and medium-sized businesses by the Institute of Directors, half said that they’d been hit by attacks caused by personnel “misuse.”
Workers do dumb things, said managers, such as downloading non-work programs, opening worm-infected e-mail, and turning off security software.
Done for security vendor McAfee, the survey said the second highest cause of security problems, at 45 percent, was due to poorly updated anti-virus software. “All too often businesses are preoccupied with patching holes, updating anti-virus, and configuring firewalls without looking at the dangers posed by their employees,” said Sal Viveros, the director of McAfee’s small- and medium-sized enterprise group, in a statement. “Businesses can have the most robust and integrated security system in the world but one rogue end user could still be responsible for introducing malicious code onto the network.”