NewswireTODAY - /newswire/ - Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, 2007/05/21 - Indian CIOs reported that their organisations have faced phishing (60%) lures & spyware (40%) attacks last year, thus emphasizing the need for protection from the emerging security threats coming from the internet by prioritising company IT security.

Phishing and spyware seem to be the biggest challenges that corporate India is facing today, reveals a survey of 450 Indian CIOs conducted between January and March 2007 by Websense, Inc. (NASDAQ: WBSN). The survey reveals that 57% of the Indian enterprises have received phishing lures during the last one year and over a third of Indian companies (38%) were attacked by spyware.

Key findings of 2007 Websense India CIO survey:

• 65% of Indian CIOs are very concerned about security threats emanating from the web (cumulative score of 7.8 on a scale of 1-10). Of these, the most concerned about ‘Web Security’ (79%) were CIOs of large enterprises. The CIOs from Mumbai (72%) and Bangalore (71%) seemed more concerned about web threats as compared to IT decision makers from Chennai (51%) and Hyderabad (45%).

• Over 55% of organisations in India believe to have received viruses and worms into their corporate network due to their employees surfing the web. Indian CIOs felt that some of the ways employees expose their corporate networks to security threats include; free software downloads, use of Instant Messaging tools, proxy avoidance sites, visiting malicious web sites and pop-ups ads.

• Organisations were uncertain in quantifying financial loss incurred due to phishing attacks.

• Chennai based organisations were the most affected among the Indian cities surveyed with just under a half (49%) having been hit by spyware attacks.

• Employee use of bandwidth clogging applications (such as streaming media), employee use of Instant Messaging and pop-up ads emerged as the top 3 IT help desk issues for India Inc., with the exception of Chennai where system issues such as ‘downtime due to malware’ and ‘spyware on employees’ workstations’ apart from pop-up ads emerged as the top three concerns for the IT departments.

• Just under half (47%) of the organisations surveyed agreed that mobile computing devices like laptops, PDAs and mobiles have heightened the threat to their security as compared to last year.

“The survey findings are an eye-opener and it may assist Indian CIOs in prioritising their IT security spend into technologies that protect organisations from emerging security threats,” said Mr. Surendra Singh, Head – South East Asia & India, Websense Inc. “Today many organisations conduct a sizeable part of the business over the web and given that a large number of employees access the internet, it is imperative that IT decision makers have a proactive approach towards monitoring, detecting and protecting against web threats.”

Survey Methodology
The survey was conducted by Websense (including collection, analysis and reporting) across four locations in India – Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai, and Hyderabad between January to March 2007. 450 organisations were identified on the basis of PC penetration and classified as Small (up to 100 PCs); Medium (101-1000 PCs) and Large (over 1000 PCs) and 150 organisations from each category across industry verticals were targeted. Websense (websense.com) received responses from 320 organisations which mainly comprised of medium (43%) and large enterprises (46%). 65% IT decision-makers from middle and senior level management responded to the survey and were mainly from IT/ ITES (33%), Manufacturing (23%), BFSI (11%), Education (9%) and the rest (24%) from other industry segments.

The overall survey results may have sampling error of plus or minus 10 percentage points. Data was not weighted and are only representative of IT decision makers surveyed.

Agency / Source: Adfactors PR (P) Ltd

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