Crossbeam Survey: Security Personnel Are Making Dangerous Security Trade-Offs to Meet Business Demands

The increasing number and severity of recent data breaches and cyber attacks have made one thing clear among major corporations and government entities: developing a strong security posture is mission critical. Yet, according to survey results announced today from Crossbeam Systems, the leading provider of next-generation security platforms for high-performance networks, IT security personnel within large corporations are shutting off critical functionality in security applications to meet network performance demands for business applications. This “security for speed” trade-off puts employees, customers, partners and other constituents at risk in order to meet business demands.

The survey, which polled nearly 500 network security, IT and C-level executives at global enterprises and service providers, reveals the extent to which IT personnel are struggling to address the “speed vs. security” trade-off. Ninety (90) percent of the respondents admit to making a trade-off between security and throughput performance. Moreover, while a majority of respondents (67 percent) agree that if forced to choose, security would trump performance when evaluating a security solution, 81 percent also admit to shutting off functionality in a security product because it was slowing down their network.

“The survey results are another proof-point for what has become a growing issue in the industry – the challenge of managing security performance,” said Chris Christiansen, program vice president, Security Products and Services, IDC. “The findings suggest the problem may be far greater than generally perceived, and it serves as a call to action for IT security personnel to take the time to test their solutions under real-world conditions, hold their security vendors accountable for the performance of their products, and gain a true understanding of their network requirements.”

Refer to press release.