Ten per cent of IT leaders deliberately compromise on security

Some don't apply security patches at all, finds survey

Computing Research finds troubling holes in data centre security.

Over ten per cent of the UK's senior IT managers make compromises on data centre security to avoid the disruption of applying security patches and bug fixes.

That's the finding of an exclusive Computing survey into the state of play in the UK's data centres.

The survey of 109 IT leaders with responsibility for the data centre found that eight per cent admit to limiting the number of security patches in order to minimise service disruption.

A further 2.2 per cent of respondents said that they do not routinely apply security patches at all, leaving their systems without vital upgrades.

The research also found that, in most cases, organisations simply adapt their existing IT security systems to cover the increasing usage of virtual machines, rather than use solutions that are designed specifically for virtual environments.

Nearly 83 per cent of IT leaders admitted to using the same security systems in their virtual systems as are deployed on their physical servers.

Just 22.5 per cent of respondents said that they plan to phase out reliance on old security systems over the next 12 months.

A troubling 3.4 per cent of IT leaders said they don't know if they use the same security systems in both environments.

The survey was sponsored by Trend Micro. The resulting white paper on the future of the data centre will be published soon.