IT Leaders Reveal Harsh Realities of Protecting Businesses in Fortinet Global Security Survey

SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwired - Oct 1, 2014) - Ninety percent of CIOs and CTOs believe the job of keeping their enterprise protected is becoming more challenging according to new research from Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), a global leader in high-performance network security. Serious boardroom pressure to keep the enterprise secure has jumped almost one-third in the last 12 months, making security paramount and a primary consideration over other business initiatives. This and other findings come from an independent survey commissioned by Fortinet of over 1,600 enterprise IT decision makers (ITDMs), largely from 500+ employee organizations around the world. All respondents were sourced from independent market research company Lightspeed GMI's online panel. 

Survey highlights include:

• Among IT decision makers recording the highest boardroom pressure, 63 percent admit abandoning or delaying at least one new business initiative because of IT security concerns.
• The increasing frequency and complexity of threats (88 percent) and the new demands of emerging technology like the Internet of Things (IoT) and biometrics (88 percent) pose the biggest challenge to ITDMs to keep their organizations secure.
• The majority of ITDMs have been provoked into action by rising data privacy concerns (90 percent) and securing big data initiatives (89 percent); in the majority of cases this means new IT security investment.

Boards Prioritize Security
The growing awareness of IT security within the boardroom -- and its resulting pressure and involvement -- was cited as a major contributor to making the IT security job more difficult, with three-quarters rating awareness of senior management as 'high' or 'very high' today, up from barely 50 percent one year prior. The survey also unveils that a total of 53 percent of all ITDMs surveyed have slowed down or cancelled a new application, service or other initiative because of cyber-security fears. The figure is 63 percent among those reporting a very high level of boardroom pressure and scrutiny around IT security. Mobility related applications and strategies are the biggest sticking points, with cloud also scoring high.