Sophos Study Reveals Over 81% of Business PC’s are Unprotected
July 21, 2008 by AntivirusWare. - Download Norton Antivirus software instantly!The Sophos Endpoint Assessment Test recently revealed (June, 2008) that 81% of the 580 business computers examined were unprotected and lacked at least one key security component. Sophos is a security firm that recently conducted a 40-day exam of corporate level business computers and the results spoke for themselves. Four out of every five were found to be lacking in at least one or more critical security areas.
Only computers that people brought in from various corporate sites were examined during the 40-day examination period. For the record, Sophos specializes in business security, not consumer level security. The three areas that the examination (scan) covered were:
- current patch levels
- firewalls
- up-to-date security software
Of the 81% that failed the examination, patches that had been issued by Microsoft were not complete, firewalls were disabled, and/or antivirus software applications were either expired or completely disabled.
Of the systems that were missing the Microsoft security patches, 63% were missing one from Adobe Flash Player, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, Windows, or Windows Media Player. Firewalls that were disabled accounted for the second largest group — 51% of the PC’s tested had the firewalls disabled. Finally, 15% of the PC’s examined had their anti-virus protection disabled or it was out-of-date.
The next step of the assessment test involved asking the different corporate firms that were represented what reasons were behind the security failures. Despite the fact that a particular software application can’t know everything, people become dependent on it for all the answers.