The Challenges of an IT Professional

With new and dramatic changes affecting the corporate work environment, a recent survey reveals IT profesionals lack the confidence in their own network.

An IT admin is a difficult job at the best of times. Whether you are working at a SME or large corporation, keeping networks secure from cyber criminals can be a challenging task. Not only that, you have to deal with other problems that come with the job such as helping others with smaller tasks. So it can be easy to take your eye off the ball and forget about security.

New Emerging Demands

But this is dangerous as we all know. With an ever increasing change in the working environment, the risk will only be greater. With cloud computing on the horizon, working out of office and bringing your own device poses new threats and challenges. It means IT professionals are continually having to stay on their toes to new demands and keep up to date with news of new threats that could potentially make their network a target.

Alarming Survey

A new survey suggests security professionals lack the confidence in their ability to deal with cyber security threats.

200 IT professionals participated in the survey; 75 percent of those said they were not confident in their ability to detect evidence of breaches and cybercrime.

2nd Survey Reveals More

Another survey revealed similar alarming results. 84 percent of 300 who took part believed an expert hacker could break their corporate network, while 23 percent definitely thought an expert hacker could.

This second survey revealed what these IT professionals believed to be the cause of their lack of confidence – malware. This includes root kits, zero day exploits and made-in-the-browser attacks.

Not All Doom and Gloom

While made-in-browser attacks are relatively new and increasingly being seen in the wild, zero day attacks are not. The main threat of zero day attacks comes not from the vendors, but users. Vendors are increasingly becoming aware of holes in their software and release a patch quickly.

But it’s up to the users such as IT admins to install these updates. As well all know however, checking for updates on a regular basis and patching is a timely process. However, there is software that makes the process easier. Patch management software scans the programs installed on a network and alerts the user to any updates available. From here, the user can select and install the update.

Even a WSUS update can be integrated into the process meaning full patching scanning and protection.

While the future of IT security is still unknown with so many dramatic changes happing in the corporate environment, threats such as zero day that have been around for a while can be tamed.