Value for Security
Stonesoft Network Security Survey also reveals Most Organisations in Malaysia are Security Conscious
14th August 2002 (NISER)
By Gopal Nair Organisations in Malaysia value the importance of High Availability features in selecting firewall solutions to protect their network environments, according to a recent survey, sponsored by Stonesoft Corporation. A total of 500 CIOs, IT and network managers from financial/banking/insurance, manufacturing, telecommunication, hospitality, retail, healthcare, government, plantation and property sectors were polled in April this year to determine their security needs. An estimated 10% percent of the sample population responded to the survey. Survey findings show that 60 percent of these executives consider High Availability as a very important part in their decision to select firewall solutions, while 40 percent of them deemed it important. High Availability means that the system has to provide redundancy to every network element and service, automatic detection of failures and automatic recovery from failures. The system has to allow maintenance operations online without traffic disturbances. The survey also tested how IT executives understand the importance of multiple ISP functionality in choosing a firewall solution. One of the reasons companies experience single point of failure is their capability to connect to only one ISP. Multiple ISP functionality allows connection of single firewall cluster to multiple providers. Findings indicate that 43 percent look for firewall security solutions with multiple ISP functionality as an added capability and only 18 percent said they do not consider it as a factor in selecting a firewall system. "This survey shows that Malaysian companies are not only looking for firewall solutions that are secure but also offer high availability and multiple ISP functionality to ensure uninterrupted business operations," said Kari Virtanen, Market Development Director, Stonesoft Corporation. "Stonesoft has been helping Fortune 500 companies worldwide protect their network environments; two out of every three top commercial banks and securities companies depend on Stonesoft to enhance their network confidence with our solutions. We want to bring our security solutions to users in Malaysia as well to help companies enhance their security policies." Stonesoft is a software company that has addressed the demands for resilient security with its set of security offerings. Its range of StoneGateTM high performance Firewall and VPN solutions is the first fully scalable, high security and high performance firewall and VPN solution for business critical applications available today. Its High Availability features include ISP load balancing, firewall clustering and server load balancing. Its Multi-Link Technology allows connection of a single firewall cluster to multiple ISPs. Other key findings
While only two out 51 respondents or 4 percent said that their network environment is currently very secured, another 39 percent revealed that they were in the process of improving their network security needs. The remaining 33 percent disclosed that their network security needed to be improved upon. While 44 percent said that the US September 11 incident did not have any effect on their operations, another 41 percent revealed that the 9-11 incident did make them more security conscious. "These findings obviously show that Malaysian IT executives are security conscious and are well aware of the threats posed by external and internal attacks even before the Sept 11 incident," said Virtanen. Other results of the survey: The poll also showed that the fear of viruses infecting and destroying precious data still runs high among Malaysian IT executives with 47% having deployed anti-virus tools in the last two years. Firewall solutions were ranked second by IT executives in terms of security solutions they have deployed. |
