The "Muddy Feet" Syndrome of Web Security

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - June 9, 2010) -  Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company (NYSE: HHS), today announced the publication of new research on Web Security in the Cloud, which compares approaches companies take to ensure that "what happens in the cloud, stays in the cloud" -- i.e., that web-borne threats are eliminated before they touch the enterprise network, reducing risk and avoiding cost. Similar to the findings published in Email Security in the Cloud (April 2009), Aberdeen's analysis shows that users of cloud-based web security had substantially better results than users of on-premise web security implementations in the critical areas of security, compliance, reliability and cost.

The consequences of enterprise end-users being exposed to the malicious elements of the web can have a significant financial impact on the business, for example loss of employee productivity, consumption of network bandwidth, unscheduled downtime, loss or exposure of sensitive data, and additional cost for remediation, audit and compliance. Compared to companies using on premise web security solutions, users of cloud-based web security solutions had 58% fewer malware incidents over the last 12 months, 93% fewer audit deficiencies, 45% less security-related downtime, and 45% fewer incidents of data loss or data exposure.

"Aberdeen's data indicates that current implementations of web security solutions are more than 2 times more likely to be on premise than cloud-based -- in other words a 60/30 split, with 10% of respondents not yet implementing anything," noted Derek Brink, vice president and research fellow for IT Security, Aberdeen Group. "Given the analysis that shows clear-cut advantages for cloud-based users in terms of security, compliance and cost, however, it seems likely that web security will follow email security as the most pragmatic, widely adopted examples of security software-as-a-service."

A complimentary copy of this report is made available in part by the following underwriters: McAfee, and Symantec Hosted Services. To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, visit: http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?spid=30410182&cid=6572&camp=2.

For additional access to complimentary Information Technology research, please visit http://research.aberdeen.com/index.php/-information-technology.

To view complimentary 30-minute webcasts highlighting findings from this and other Aberdeen IT Security research, visit http://www.brighttalk.com/channels/1209/view.

About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company
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