Over-stretched IT Security Pros Spend More Time Fire-fighting than Doing Meaningful Security Work

A study carried out by security management vendor FireMon at this month’s Infosecurity Europe in London has given brutally honest insight into the immense pressure cyber security professionals are under to carry out their jobs and meet outside regulations. A staggering 28% admitted to compromising their ethics to pass audits, a figure that is up 6% from five years ago when the same question was posed in a similar survey. This is likely due to growing network complexity and all of the disparate technology, security and otherwise, used to keep cyber criminals at bay.

When asked if they felt that they spend most of their day fire-fighting rather than doing meaningful security work, 51% of the IT security professionals surveyed agreed. A further 56% admitted they had added a product purely to meet compliance regulations, even though they knew it offered no other business benefit.