A global provider of phone-based authentication, PhoneFactor (News - Alert), Inc. has released the results of its recent survey that was conducted on more than 300 IT professionals about the security of their corporate networks.
The results of the survey indicated that more than half of IT professionals lacked confidence and were unwilling to bet their own money that their corporate network would not be breached in the next year.
More than two-thirds of respondents were only somewhat confident or not at all confident that an unauthorized person could not gain access to their network. Only one-quarter of respondents were very confident that they would know that their network had been infiltrated.
The survey also found that only the right tools in place such as real-time alerts and stronger authentication will help increase confidence enough for most to raise their bets.
When asked if an expert hacker would be capable of infiltrating their network, 84.4 percent thought it was at least possible, while 23.1 percent said that an expert hacker could definitely gain access to their corporate network.
57.7 percent refused to take the bet when asked to wager one of five amounts -- $0, $1000, $5000, $50,000, or $1,000,000 -- that their network will NOT be compromised in the next 12 months.
"It's easy for a person to say that their network is secure, but when we asked them to make a bet using their own money they simply would not do so unless these further protections were put into place," said Sarah Fender, Vice President of Marketing and Product Management at PhoneFactor, in a press release.
Also, according to the survey, nearly half of all respondents indicated that their company was planning to increase their use of out-of-band authentication over the next two years.
In related news, PhoneFactor has launched a program that can help organizations using SecurID token products which were affected by the recent breach at RSA (News - Alert).
Edited by Rich Steeves