core sector communique

MCAFEE RISK AND COMPLIANCE OUTLOOK REPORT finds

SIEM and DATABASE SECURITY ARE TOP PRIORITIES

Annual Report Reveals Organizations are Moving Away from ‘One Size Fits All’ Approach and are Looking for Best-of-Breed Core Solutions for Risk and Compliance

India– May 29, 2012–McAfee today announced findings from its annual study that highlights how IT decision-makers view and address the challenges of risk and compliance management in a highly regulated and increasingly complex global business environment. The report Risk and Compliance Outlook: 2012, found that Database Security and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) were among the top priorities due to increased advanced persistent threats.

Database security has been an ongoing concern for organizations due to highly publicized data breaches and the growing regulatory compliance demands. The largest portion of an enterprise’s most sensitive and valuable information resides in databases. When asked about sensitive database breaches, over one quarter had either had a breach or did not have the visibility to detect a breach. In addition, respondents listed databases as the top challenge in meeting regulatory mandates.

The other top concern was SIEM, finding that most organizations rely on legacy systems that do not meet their current needs. Ever changing threats, data breaches, and IT complexity add to the burden of being able to monitor security events, detect attacks, and assess real and potential risk. Approximately 40% of organizations are planning to implement or update a SIEM solution. While 80% of respondents cited visibility as very important, security teams remained challenged in this area. Discovering threats was listed as the top challenge to managing enterprise risk.

Key Findings:

• Similar to the 2011 survey, there is a positive trend in security budgets for 2012 with 96% of the organizations indicating same or more expenditure on risk and compliance.

• Organization state ‘Compliance’ as the driver for almost 30% of IT projects.

• Software and Appliance are the top choices for Risk and Compliance products.On average, one-third of all organizations prioritized the upgrade/implementation of unique risk and compliance products to address vulnerability assessment, patch management, remediation, governance, risk management, and compliance.

• Survey data showed rapid uptake towards Hosted SaaS and Virtualization. Nearly 40% organizations claim to be moving towards these deployment models in 2012.

• Patch Management frequency is a challenge - almost half of the organizations patch on a monthly basis with one-third doing it on a weekly basis. Just like last year’s analysis, not all companies are able to pinpoint threats or vulnerabilities, as a result, 43% indicate that they over-protect and patch everything they can.

“Managing risk through security and compliance continues to be a leading concern for organizations the world over,” said Jill Kyte, vice president of security management at McAfee. “Meeting the requirements of increasingly demanding regulations while reducing exposure to the new classes of sophisticated threats and having an accurate understanding of risk and compliance at any point in time – can be challenging. To address this issue, organizations are looking to “best-of-breed” solutions to manage all aspects of their risk and compliance needs and reduce the amount of time spent managing multiple solutions.”

About the Report:

The independent research for the Risk and Compliance Outlook was conducted by Evaluserve on behalf of McAfee. The survey includes responses from 438 IT decision makers, consultants and security analysts from companies with more than 250 worldwide employees who are involved in evaluation, selection, day-to-day management and maintenance of security products. Surveys were conducted in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, Singapore, United Kingdom and United States.

About McAfee

McAfee, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC), is the world's largest dedicated security technology company. McAfee delivers proactive and proven solutions and services that help secure systems, networks, and mobile devices around the world, allowing users to safely connect to the Internet, browse and shop the Web more securely. Backed by its unrivaled Global Threat Intelligence, McAfee creates innovative products that empower home users, businesses, the public sector and service providers by enabling them to prove compliance with regulations, protect data, prevent disruptions, identify vulnerabilities, and continuously monitor and improve their security.