I Can’t Believe This

When I started this blog I knew in the back of my mind there were a few topics that I would never touch because I don’t feel I can compete with the experts that are already writing on the topic.  As a result of the frenzy around these topics there’s already to much out there to digest and find interesting.  Taboo subjects for me – security and H1B Visas for example.

I’m about to break my promise.

Promoted on the September 15th cover of CIO magazine are the results of its annual Global State of Information Security.  If you read the report, it states that:

• Only 93% of surveyed companies have firewalls in place, and
• 69% of surveyed companies keep an accurate inventory of how and where they store their user data.

I find this remarkable.  How in today’s day in age do you not have a firewall?  I wouldn’t dream of connecting my home network to the Internet without a locked down firewall.   Similarly, with almost daily headlines about Company’s sensitive data walking out the door, how could you not have initiatives to understand what you have and where you store it?  Analogous situations come to mind:

• Not having insurance on your home or car,
• Leaving your luggage “for just a moment” on the curb outside the Roman Coliseum while you duck in to use the restroom, or
• Inviting the Juice (OJ Simpson) over to the house to …

Well, you get the picture.

Could these statistics be accurate, or is there a sampling error?

I welcome you comments.
Mike Brannan