Competing Priorities Mean Security Risks for Small Businesses

IT professionals at small businesses face a number of competing priorities. They're generally individuals or small teams charged to "to it all," from great customer user experience to company security. And 98% think the employees at their companies could be doing more to help on the security front.

A new report, based on a survey sponsored by LastPass and conducted by Vanson Bourne, finds competing priorities lead to competing objectives for improving security. Among their security objectives for the coming year, more than 50% of the 700 professionals who responded to the survey cited securing data (75%), securing new technologies as they're adopted (68%), reducing risk (66%), and upgrading identify access management (65%).

All of those, and especially identity management, are made more difficult because of all the other requirements these all-purpose IT professionals need to balance. Forty-seven percent say they have to balance ease of use against security, while 37% cite employee demands for greater ease of use as a competing requirement.

The critical nature of finding the proper balance is illustrated by another finding, that 82% of respondents say their businesses have been exposed to a risk as a result of poor identity and access practices.

Read more here.

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