Netwrix Survey: 70% of Companies Invest in Vulnerability Assessment Primarily to Be Proactive Rather than to Ensure Compliance

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Apr 07, 2022, 09:00 ET

Only 10% of respondents implemented their vulnerability assessment solution due to a previous or upcoming audit.

IRVINE, Calif., April 7, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Netwrix, a cybersecurity vendor that makes data security easy, asked 720 IT pros all over the world how they assess vulnerabilities in their IT infrastructure. The survey found that 70% of organizations have a vulnerability assessment tool, either deployed internally or provided as a third-party service. Most of those respondents (70%) said the primary reason for purchasing the tool was the need for proactive security measures; 76% of those who do not yet own a vulnerability assessment tool and plan to acquire one in the near future chose the same key driver – to be secure proactively.

"The survey shows that continuous scanning for known vulnerabilities is a popular approach for proactively securing an IT environment," says Joe Dibley, Security Researcher at Netwrix. "Technology teams implement these tools to proactively identify, prioritize and manage risks to the business. Only 8% of respondents who don't own a solution say they do not require one. This shows that vulnerability management is widely considered a must-have."

In the past several years, companies have become more security-focused, with widely-covered incidents like Colonial Pipeline and Solar Winds making the consequences of breaches more evident to everyone, not just the IT department. As a result, CISOs and CIOs have been able to secure approval for increases in their cybersecurity budgets. In the Gartner® 2021 CIO Agenda Survey, cybersecurity was the top priority for new spending, with 61% of the more than 2,000 CIOs surveyed increasing investment in cyber/information security this year.^[1]

While budget is top of mind for 58% of respondents, more than half (52%) said they would consider changing to a new solution if it would reduce the volume of false positive alerts. Some respondents even left comments like, "will not sacrifice performance and accuracy for $$."

"Every false positive finding takes time away from a security-focused team member. Many technology teams are already overloaded far beyond 100%, so lots of false positive notifications can lead to alert fatigue and burnout," commented Dibley. "In addition, 38% of respondents said they would consider changing tools to gain greater breadth of infrastructure coverage, which shows that organizations are gaining a greater understanding that they need to protect not only their servers but also their switches, storage and other infrastructure-related items."

Complete findings of the 2022 Netwrix Vulnerability Assessment survey are available here.

^[1]Source: Gartner Press Release, "Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Security and Risk Management Spending to Exceed $150 Billion in 2021", May 17, 2021. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

About Netwrix

Netwrix makes data security easy, thereby simplifying how professionals can control sensitive, regulated and business-critical data, regardless of where it resides. More than 11,500 organizations worldwide rely on Netwrix solutions to secure sensitive data, realize the full business value of enterprise content, pass compliance audits with less effort and expense, and increase the productivity of IT teams and knowledge workers.

Founded in 2006, Netwrix has earned more than 150 industry awards and been named to both the Inc. 5000 and Deloitte Technology Fast 500 lists of the fastest growing companies in the U.S.

For more information, visit www.netwrix.com.

CONTACT:

Erin Jones
Avista PR for Netwrix
P: 704.664.2170
E: [email protected]

SOURCE Netwrix