Meta - Lack of user awareness impacting security

While security professionals understand that user awareness is a vital component of a company's security measures, not enough company's are spending enough money to ensure that their employees are furnished with adequate knowledge of security procedure, according to analysts Meta Group.

While technical skills are relatively easy to measure for IT security staff, managers need to place a greater emphasis on measuring communication skills.

According to Meta, policies that control the selection and deployment of technology may have automated enforcement, but a significant part of security consists of policies governing the behaviour of individuals. Traditionally, security professionals have regarded "awareness programs" as a requirement, but few organisations have proven willing to fund strong communication programs of this type. Meta Group research indicates that more than 75% of organisations identify a lack of user awareness as moderately or severely reducing the effectiveness of their current security program. In addition, 66% identify a lack of executive awareness as having similar levels of impact.

      "An ideal answer is to establish a well-funded and well-staffed security communication program. But developing the corporate culture to support that level of investment takes years of effective communication by the existing security staff. In fact, most organisations will fail to successfully secure their technology environment simply because the security staff lacks the communication skills to create this shift in corporate culture," said Meta Group security analyst Chris Byrnes.

      In order to help tackle the problem, Meta recommend that annual reviews and initial hiring criteria should not only measure a security staffer's technical capabilities, but also the ability to communicate, arguing that communication is a critical skill for most security staff, when undertaking duties such as disseminating policy to end users or presenting budgets for senior-level executives, and should therefore be given equal opportunity for review. One area that managers can focus on as a measure of security communication skills is the end user's knowledge of policy and policy awareness.

"Certainly, the ability to configure and maintain security enforcement tools is at the core of the position, but the importance of communicating security policy to end users is critical to obtain their cooperation in security initiatives and therefore should not be given short shrift," said Byrnes. "As security teams focus on policy and audit/compliance, the success of those security initiatives depends on obtaining cooperation from end users, executive management, and IT and business managers."

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