Trading Speed for Security

James E. Powell on a potentially troubling trend among network security professionals. I see the need/demand for more and more bandwidth, but at the expensive of security?

Security Pros Trading Network Speed for Secure Environment:

A new survey of 478 security professionals and C-level executives reveals that IT security pros are responding to increased network traffic by turning off functionality in their security solutions.

Despite the increasing number of risks posed by a variety of recent data breaches and attacks, 90 percent of respondents admit that they make the security/throughput trade-off. It’s not that these IT professionals don’t understand the problem; they understand the growing impact of mobile devices, for example. Despite a majority (67 percent) admitting that security trumps performance in security solution evaluations, 81 percent say they turn off functionality because network performance was negatively affected.

Even when they adopt “next generational firewall” (NGFW) products, Crossbeam says security pros have to select which features to allow so they can meet network performance goals.