The Most Critical Factor To Attaining Organizational Security: You

According to a study just released by consulting firm Frost & Sullivan, you -- that's right: you -- may be the most important factor in the security of your organization.It's not swanky software security suites, powerful ASIC security appliances, or even how qualified your IT security staff happens to be (though all of that helps) that is the most important factor to security. It's not even choosing Apple's Leopard OS X over the Windows Vista operating system.

Nope. It's how well end-users follow security policy.

In fact, 80% of the 7,548 security professionals surveyed ranked end users following security policies from "important" to "very important" in keeping their organizations secure. That tally even slightly edged management support of security policies, which came in at about 78%.

In fact, IT security managers don't seem to think very highly of upper management's importance to IT security. In fact, only 28% of those surveyed believe having access to executive management such as the CEO is "very important" to secure their organization.

When it comes to security technologies, the top five being deployed in the Americas are biometrics, wireless, business continuity/disaster recovery, intrusion prevention, and cryptography.

Let's hope the big investments in crypto make their way onto notebooks, where encryption is both manageable and sorely needed. The report is available here. You may be doing your company a favor by brushing up on your IT security policies. But do you know what your organization's IT security polices are, let alone where to find them?