Security: the next frontier for outsourcing?

• Position: INFO SECURITY - Survey on data security

Look for this year to mark the start of a new era in information security--the era of outsourcing security. So advises CounterTack's CTO Michael Davis in Information-Week Reports summary of the 2014 Strategic Security Survey.

Managing the complexity of security remains the top challenge facing the 536 respondents (all from companies with 100 or more employees) to the annual survey. The main culprit is the personal device. According to the survey report, 58% of the respondents see an infected personal device connecting to the corporate network as a top security concern, even more so than phishing and lost devices. Almost as many (56%) say cyber-criminals pose the greatest threat to their organizations this year, followed by authorized users and employees (49%).

Perhaps most discouraging is the fact that 75% of the responding organizations are as vulnerable or more so to malicious code attacks and security breaches than they were a year ago. The reasons: the threats are more sophisticated (77%), there are more ways than ever to attack a corporate network (66%), and there are budget constraints (40%). Despite the increasing complexity and avenues for threats, companies are spending only 1% to 5% on security--the same amount as Gartner reported in 2010, Davis pointed out.

"Look behind the numbers and it...