Web 2.0 and virtualisation top poll of IT security priorities

Web 2.0 and virtualisation will be the hot topics occupy most security professionals in the coming year, according to a Symantec survey.

The poll of 500 attendees of the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas revealed that 46 per cent believed Web 2.0 would be the biggest worry in their organisations when it came to vulnerabilities, followed by 35 per cent with virtualisation.

Participants included IT managers, security researchers and senior IT executives.

Data theft remains a serious concern, with the main causes for the loss of personal data flagged as insufficient access controls (26 per cent), loss or stolen laptops (23 per cent), data sent to third parties (21 per cent) and improper posting of information to the internet, intranet and extranet (20 per cent).

Whitelisting' - the use of lists to pre-approve incoming email senders and trusted web sites - are becoming more common. The survey said 34 per cent of respondents implemented some form of whitelisting in their organisations.

Zulfikar Ramzan, technical director for the Symantec's security response centre, said on his blog that this indicated that security was getting to the point where malicious code was outnumbering the good.

He said: "This trend necessitates considering a new approach to providing security; namely, rather than blocking out the bad, we should consider just allowing in the good."