Ipswitch Study Reveals IT Pros’ Woes with Security and Compliance Audits

LEXINGTON, Mass. – June 25, 2015 – Ipswitch announced the findings of a security and compliance survey that highlights the difficulties IT teams face when preparing for compliance audits. The survey polled 313 IT professionals in United States with 59 percent noting that they were not fully prepared to undergo an audit. Additionally, an astonishing 75 percent of respondents lacked confidence that colleagues authorized to work with sensitive information are adequately protecting it. When asked what they would be willing to do instead of a compliance audit, nearly half of all respondents (46 percent) would either undergo a root canal procedure, work over the holidays, live without electricity for a week or eat a live jellyfish.

Survey findings indicate:

IT professionals are unprepared for audits and lack confidence in user security

– More than half of IT professionals (59 percent) admit they are not prepared to undergo a compliance audit today

– 75 percent of respondents are only somewhat confident or not confident at all that colleagues authorized to work with sensitive information are being cautious and taking the steps to fully protect that data

– One-third of IT professionals (34 percent) believe data loss prevention is the most important security measure for their organization followed by security policies (24 percent), data encryption (18 percent), tracking and reporting (18 percent) and identity management (six percent)

Compliance audits are disruptive and consume significant IT resources

– 52 percent of IT professionals find the allocation of IT resources is the costliest part of a compliance audit

– Another 18 percent of respondents point to critical project delays, while 13 percent say just the emotional strain and stress alone is the costliest part of an audit

IT professionals would rather undergo a root canal procedure than endure a compliance audit

– About 1 in 5 IT professionals polled (18 percent) would rather undergo a root canal procedure than a compliance audit, followed by 15 percent of respondents who would rather work during the holidays than participate in an audit

– Eight percent would live without electricity at home for a week and five percent would even eat a live jellyfish rather than endure a compliance audit

“The regulatory guidelines in financial services, healthcare and other high-risk industries demand full transparency and protection of critical business data across the borderless enterprise. Even with this in mind, our survey indicates a remarkable lack of preparedness and confidence on the part of IT pros to pass an audit today,” said Jeff Loeb, Chief Marketing Officer at Ipswitch.“Fortunately, IT pros can take the pain out of an audit by using a managed file transfer system like Ipswitch MOVEit to easily comply with data security regulations and protect data with centralized audit logs and reports for file transmission.”

The Ipswitch MOVEit™ managed file transfer system helps IT pros meet compliance in the following ways:

Protect Data

• * Support for secure open standard transfer protocols
• * End-to-end encryption, guaranteed delivery and non-repudiation
• * Automated file management policies

Manage Data

• * Automated file exchange
• * Managed ad hoc exchange
• * Policy-based file access and data loss protection (DLP)

Manage System Exposure

• * High availability and disaster recovery
• * Monitoring and reporting for auditing and forensics
• * Trading partner provisioning and management

Ipswitch Compliance Survey Resources

• * Full survey results: http://bit.ly/ComplianceSurveyFullResults
• * Infographic:http://bit.ly/ComplianceSurveyInfographic

About Ipswitch

Ipswitch helps solve complex IT problems with simple solutions. The company’s software has been installed on more than 150,000 networks spanning 168 countries to monitor networks, applications and servers, and securely transfer files between systems, business partners and customers. Ipswitch was founded in 1991 and is based in Lexington, Massachusetts with offices throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America. For more information, visit www.ipswitch.com.