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The survey revealed that the majority of Global 2000 companies have areas
within their networks that are not properly analysed. These "blind spots"
can lead to costly breaches due to unknown applications, traffic, devices
and users operating insecurely on a corporate network. 72 percent of
respondents reported that they experienced five or more network-based
security incidents in the past 12 months, with managed devices experiencing
the most security incidents, despite increased investment in managed
security technologies.

Managed end user computers yielded the highest network-based security
incidents, with nearly one-third of companies in the U.S., 19 percent of
companies in the U.K. and 50 percent of German companies reporting five or
more. Managed servers also served as gateways for attack in 27 percent of
companies in the U.S., 19 percent of companies in the U.K. and 36 percent of
German companies. The survey suggests that this is leading to low customer
confidence in security agents being deployed.

"In today’s distributed enterprise, creating a truly secure network, whether
managed or unmanaged, requires instant visibility into the devices that are
connecting to it, paired with an ability to automate threat responses," said
Rob Greer, CMO and SVP of Products at ForeScout. "Vulnerable entry points
are widespread, and the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices and
mobile computing is only increasing the security attack surface. Automation
can help security teams orchestrate their technologies to help eliminate
network blind spots-giving them true visibility and actionability into their
connected devices."

Additional findings from the "Network Visibility Survey" include:

– Low confidence about use of security agents: Many network security
administrators use security and management agents to track and secure
managed endpoints on their networks. However, the survey demonstrated that
too much reliance on these agents brings a false sense of security. 37
percent of respondents reported they have low confidence in their patch
management agents, followed closely by mobile device management (MDM) agents (35 percent), encryption agents (28 percent) and antivirus agents (27
percent).

– Independent firewall, vulnerability assessment and advanced threat
defence (ATD) products suffer the most from blind spots: Regardless of the
region or technology, IT and security administrators revealed that their
networks have significant blind spots. Firewall, vulnerability assessment
and ATD products suffered the most from blind spots, followed closely by
network intrusion prevention systems (IPS), security information and event
management (SIEM), enterprise mobility management (EMM) and antivirus
technologies-underscoring that too many organisations deploy network
security technologies in silos, with little or no communication between
products and teams.

– Networks would benefit from automated security controls: Most
organisations report that their security teams and technical talent are
stretched thin. According to the survey, IT professionals would unanimously
welcome a set of pre-determined security controls within each network
security technology to facilitate automation and save critical resources.
The leading technologies that respondents wanted to automatically invoke
security controls for were firewalls (67 percent), IPS (65 percent) and
antivirus (63 percent).

"We’ve confirmed what most people already expect - that no company is truly
secure without its security technologies working together. A siloed security
approach can create network blind spots that have costly, long-term impacts
on business continuity and brand reputation," said Chris Kissel, Industry
Analyst, Network Security Research, at Frost & Sullivan. "Without full
network visibility, these attack surfaces will only increase, given the
fast-growing number of BYOD and IoT devices being connected to corporate
networks."

To download the full "Network Visibility Survey," please go to:
http://resources.forescout.com/Frost-Sullivan_NAC_White-Paper.html