48% say their organizations approach to risk based security management is non-existent or ‘ad-hoc’

LONDON, UK: Tripwire, Inc., a leading global provider of risk based security and compliance management solutions, today announced the first installment of an extensive survey on the state of risk-based security management with the Ponemon Institute©. The survey covers risk-based security management program governance and maturity and includes 571 U.K. and 749 U.S. respondents from the following areas: IT security, IT operations, IT risk management, business operations, compliance/internal audit and enterprise risk management.

“The findings from this report strongly indicate that risk-based security management is still viewed as an IT or security task instead of a business task,” noted Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute. “Unfortunately, the full value of a risk-based approach to security can only be realized when senior business leaders fully participate in the process.”

Key findings from the survey include:

· 77% rated their organizations’ commitment to risk-based security management as ‘significant’ or ‘very significant’

· 86% identified the minimization of non-compliance as a key business objectives for risk-based security programs and 85% identified the protection of intellectual property

· 59% say that risk-based security management helps align security programs with business objectives

However

· 48% say their organizations approach or strategy for risk-based security management is non-existent or ‘ad-hoc’

· 61% say that the business has little or no input involvement in providing risk-based analysis

· 51% don’t have a risk-based security management program or most program activities have not been deployed

· Only 27% have a security risk management strategy that is applied consistently across the enterprise

“There’s a big gap between risk-based security program commitment and how organizations are actually operating,” noted Elizabeth Ireland, vice president of product marketing for Tripwire. “This could be because many organizations haven’t fully connected the importance of their cyber security program to their top-level business risks in spite of the rapid increase in cyber security threats.”

The complete survey results will be released in five parts over the next two months and will cover the following topics:

· Risk-based security management maturity and governance

· The value of risk-based security metrics

·Key metrics for risk-based security

· Risk-based security controls and spending

· Risk-based security collaboration, communication and culture