Certification Magazine - February 2008 - (Page 22) are equipped to deal with lost corporate or personal data, which impact the bottom line the most. Adding to the stress is that midmarket IT organizations reported an average of six disparate user interfaces in use for systems and security management. This creates challenges in learning and using security tools effectively. When IT pros are juggling so many different tools, it means they’ll spend less time on more substantive security issues. For some of the more familiar tools, such as the pop-up or spyware blocker, managing more than one isn’t a big deal. But when more advanced security issues must be dealt with, the unfamiliarity can paralyze some into ignoring them. This is where the value of the survey comes into play for Meinhardt: While it illuminates certain shortcomings of the one-man IT pro, it creates developmental ideas for KACE. “A lot of it comes down to automation,” he said. “One interesting insight from the survey was we asked what types of things [respondents were] doing to protect themselves. We asked a number of different angles on that and saw some pretty divergent views. Obviously, almost everyone has anti-virus, but when you get into other important aspects of security management, the percentage of people actually employing those best practices are much lower.” gies of participants, while only a third said they used end-node vulnerability scanning. Meinhardt’s goal is to eventually consolidate these complicated, hence ignored tasks to ease the fears of IT pros forced to make compromised decisions. While the opinions of presidents and executives are valid to show what specific certifications and train- For some of the more familiar tools, such as the pop-up or spyware blocker, managing more than one isn’t a big deal. But when more advanced security issues must be dealt with, the unfamiliarity can paralyze some into ignoring them. ing they’ll look for in a jack-of-all-trades position, these opinions can’t give the street-level perspective of what it’s like to be in that position. Jeff Walker runs Drum Communications. He and one other IT professional travel constantly all over their Participants in the survey were asked specifically if other important aspects, such as anti-virus software and firewalls, were a constant presence among midmarket respondents. Automated desktop configuration was reported for only half of the security strate- 22 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE February 2008
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