Disjointed technologies as biggest challenge facing UK IT security pros

A survey conducted during Infosecurity Europe 2015 by Tenable Network Security has found that disjointed technologies are the biggest challenge facing UK IT security professionals in 2015.

More than 50 percent of survey respondents point the finger at fragmentation and lack of integration among security technologies. A lack of qualified staff was named as the second biggest challenge with 30 percent.

“What is interesting is that the second biggest challenge is most likely exacerbating the biggest challenge,” said Gavin Millard, EMEA technical director, Tenable Network Security. “Disjointed technology means less automation of daily security tasks and less ability to share information across the enterprise. This in turn means more hands-on hours spent by security teams on relatively low-level security responses, decreasing the entire security department’s efficiency and security readiness.”

The study also asked IT and security professionals what aspect of their jobs caused the biggest headache. User access claimed the top spot with 33 percent, followed closely by “keeping the network secure” with 28 percent. Vulnerability management rounded out the top three with 22 percent admitting to struggling on that front.

“Today’s organisations are dealing with technology that is evolving faster and infrastructure that is expanding exponentially,” said Millard. “The issue for most organisations is they can’t begin to untangle their diverse IT environments because they lack good situational awareness. The need to know what’s on your network, to continuously monitor for misconfigurations and vulnerabilities, and to appropriately remediate are repeatedly cited among industry leaders as best practices for good reason.”

Tenable surveyed nearly 300 IT and information security professionals over three days during Infosecurity Europe 2015. The results are valid within a six-percent margin of error.