One in 10 IT professionals cheat in audits

Half the number who did last year

Firewall audits said to take a week

Techies are becoming more honest, but only marginally. A recent survey showed that one in 10 IT professionals admit cheating to pass an IT audit.

This might be shocking but it is half the number who admitted to cheating in audits in the survey last year.

Lack of time and resources were cited as the main reasons for the errant behaviour. A quarter of respondents said firewall audits take a week to conduct, consequently 30 per cent audit their firewalls only once every five years and seven per cent never conduct an audit.

Given these responses, unsurprisingly 36 per cent of IT professionals admit their firewall rule bases are a mess, increasing their susceptibility to hackers, network crashes and compliance violations.

The survey was conducted by security lifecycle management company Tufin Technologies among 242 IT professionals mainly from organisations employing 1000 to 5000 or more employees.