The dark side of virtualization: two in three IT decision makers in the US fear job loss caused by security breaches

An October 2016 Bitdefender survey of 250 IT decision makers in the United States in companies with more than 1,000 PCs shows that virtualization is a strategic priority, yet they are still not fully ready for the security challenges this environment brings. Hybrid infrastructures have become the major common architecture in the enterprise environment and CIOs have to adapt to the new world. 

Some 73% of IT decision makers fear the financial compensation the company might have to pay in the event of a security breach, while 66% even fear about losing their job. Moreover, seven out of 10 IT decision makers are concerned or completely concerned regarding the security management of hybrid infrastructures.  

Gartner recently predicted in a report that the cloud will most commonly be used in a hybrid manner by 2020, and emphasized that operating entirely off the cloud will largely disappear by the end of the decade. The advisory company estimates that, by 2019, more than 30 of the 100 largest vendors’ new software investments will have shifted from cloud-first to cloud-only.

 “Aside from the fact that many organizations with a no-cloud policy actually have some under-the-radar or unavoidable cloud usage, we believe that this position will become increasingly untenable,” said Jeffrey Mann, research vice president at Gartner. “Cloud will increasingly be the default option for software deployment. The same is true for custom software, which increasingly is designed for some variation of public or private cloud.” By 2020, a corporate “no-cloud” policy will be as rare as a “no-internet” policy is today, Gartner also says. “Technology providers will increasingly be able to assume that their customers will be able to consume cloud capabilities.”

Cloud adoption and the widespread usage of hybrid infrastructures will bring unknown security challenges that CIOs have to prevent by adopting breakthrough technologies able to fight zero-day exploits, Advanced Persistent Threats, and other devastating types of cybercrime. Bitdefender has solved the technical challenges of creating a solution to the root problem, giving datacenter owners unprecedented insight, and allowing them to act on information from below the operating system. It is the only security company that provides security at the ring-1 level.

This survey, carried out by iSense Solutions, shows the main security concerns and issues they face.

By the end of 2015, only 15 percent of enterprises have adopted it so far, although the demand for hybrid cloud is estimated to be growing at a compound rate of 27% a year, outpacing overall IT market growth, according to researcher MarketsandMarkets as cited by The Journal. The company said it expects the hybrid cloud market to reach $85 billion in 2019, up from $25 billion in 2014.

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Methodology

This survey was conducted in October 2016 by iSense Solutions for Bitdefender on 250 IT security purchase professionals (CIOs/CEOs/ CISOs – 26 percent, IT managers/directors – 56 percent, IT system administrators – 10 percent, IT support specialists – 5 percent, and others), from enterprises with 1,000+ PCs based in the United States of America.

More than half of the organizations surveyed are from the IT hardware and software / electronic and electrical engineering industries, while 24 percent are from manufacturing, 6 percent from transportation, 4 percent are providers of telecommunication services, 4 percent are utility or public services companies, and the rest come from construction, retail, distribution, media or other industries.

Some 62 percent of the organizations surveyed have over 3,000 employees, 14 percent between 2,000 and 2,999, and 24 percent between 1,000 and 1,999.

Regarding IT infrastructure development in the organizations, 39 percent of the companies have 3,000+ computers, 21 percent between 2,000 and 2,999, and 40 percent between 1,000 and 1,999. The average proportion of employees working on computers in the organizations surveyed is 74 percent.

Geographically, a third of the organizations are in the West, 30 percent in the North-East, 28 percent in the South and 11 percent in the Mid-West.

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