Password misuse to be blamed hacking spike: survey

LOS ANGELES, USA: Lieberman Software Corporation, a player in Pprivileged Identity Management(SM)(PIM) and leading information security company, has announced the result of its Password 2011 survey which revealed that 48 percent of IT security professionals surveyed have worked for organizations whose network has been breached by a hacker.

The survey paints a vivid picture of password chaos amongst IT staff and apathy about password security amongst their senior management.

-- 51 percent of respondents had ten or more passwords to remember for use in their work

-- 42 percent of those surveyed said that in their organizations IT staff are sharing passwords or access to systems or applications

-- 26 percent said that they were aware of an IT staff member abusing a privileged login to illicitly access sensitive information

-- 48 percent of respondents work at companies that are still not changing their privileged passwords within 90 days -- a violation of most major regulatory compliance mandates and one of the major reasons why hackers are still able to compromise the security of large organizations

Password Management and Data Breaches

According to a release, the survey of more than 300 international IT professionals shows that a fundamental lack of IT security awareness in enterprises, particularly in the arena of password control and privileged logins, is potentially paving the way for a further wave of data breaches in 2011.

For many organizations these weaknesses are the backdoors by which hackers find their way into the enterprise's most sensitive data. If almost 50 pc of all passwords remain unchanged, as this survey discovered, then fundamental and basic IT security practices are being ignored by staff and their senior management.

Privileged identities are accounts that hold elevated permission to access files, install and run programs, and change configuration settings. Their misuse is a major reason for data leakage.

Philip Lieberman, President and CEO of Lieberman Software, said: "This survey shows that despite the huge number of frequent data breaches, over the past twelve months senior management in many organizations have not yet grasped the fundamentals of IT security. In fact they are actively paving the way for more and bigger disasters."

He continued: "Password anarchy among the IT staff at major organizations is mirrored by password apathy at the top of the management hierarchy, where senior management seem almost criminally lax in the enforcement of IT security policies - to the detriment of their organizations."

"These fundamentally careless practices and procedures revealed by the IT departments of the organizations we surveyed could cost them dearly in the coming months. We have consistently said that basic security includes locking down access to systems containing sensitive data to minimize the insider threat. However, only months after the Sony, RSA Security and Comodo breaches the situation within major organizations remains at risk," Lieberman said.

"Management will have to pay far more attention to their basic security practices or be forced to apologize to their shareholders and customers for major data losses and subsequent damage to brand loyalty. The simple, unpalatable truth is that senior management generally is not policing their IT security departments enough to avoid further massive data breaches."

The survey was conducted by Lieberman Software at HP Protect 2011 amongst more than 300 IT professionals. The full results can be found at www.liebsoft.com/Password_Security_Survey/