Virtualization is of least importance for Education, Non-Profit Sectors
According to a survey conducted by Kaspersky Lab, more than 3,900 IT professionals worldwide, companies in the Non-Profit/Charitable and Education sectors rated virtualization security as their lowest IT security priority. In fact, their rankings of virtualization security were the lowest recorded across all business sectors. The survey data suggests that both sectors had different factors influencing this indifference to virtualization security, and also shows which IT security factors are seen as top priorities.
The Non-Profit/Charitable sector reported the lowest rate of virtualization adoption across all sectors of Kaspersky Lab’s survey. Only 42% of charities and non-profits thought virtualization was becoming a core part of their IT infrastructure, compared to a global average of 52%. Given this low rate of adoption, it was not surprising to find charities and non-profits also reported the lowest security prioritization of their virtual infrastructure. Only 10% of charities and non-profits said securing their virtual infrastructure was one of their top three IT security priorities for the coming year.
The education sector shared a similar attitude to the importance of securing virtual infrastructure, also reporting that only 10% of their sector had virtualization as a top three concern. However, the education sector reported a higher than average usage of virtualization, with 54% reporting virtual environments as a core part of their IT infrastructure, a rate that was 12-percentage points higher than their charity counterparts.
In addition to budget constraints, the Non-Profit/Charity and Education sectors also rely on their IT security measures to protect huge amounts of personal data they store, making any under-equipped IT departments particularly vulnerable to data theft. Charities in particular rely heavily on donations, so maintaining their reputations for securely managing the personal and financial information of their donors is paramount.
According to Kaspersky Lab’s survey, 63% of non-profits and charities said damage to their credibility would be the worst potential consequence of a data breach. When asked what type of data they most feared losing, 41% of non-profits and charities cited their client and donor information, a rate that was far higher than any other business sector.
Educators placed similar importance on their reputation, ranking damaged reputation as their second most feared consequence of a data breach, with 44% of respondents citing this outcome. (This consequence was only slightly behind their top concern of losing access to critical information, cited by 48% of respondents.) Educators also agreed that their client information – in this case, the information of students and faculty – is the data they most fear losing, cited by 21% of respondents.
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