Definitely not. But its press coverage may make one think so.
Recently I was asked to produce an article about intranet security for an authoritative US magazine. I am far from being a newbie on the market and have a fair amount of first-hand knowledge about the extent to which vendors neglect integrating security features in their products, letting customers fend for themselves among third-party solutions. However, it was really amazing to discover how little coverage intranet security receives in media, on the web and in professional communities.
Alex Manchester from Step Two Designs quickly summarized my request to the Intranet Professionals group in LinkedIn: “I’d be very surprised, but also very interested, to see any responses to this.” As you may have guessed, I got a plain zero result concerning valuable information about intranet security statistics and best practices.
Most of the sources I found on the web were outdated security tips with no particular focus on intranets. What useful information was there? Well, yes, you must use a firewall, properly set up access rights, implement a security policy, etc. The advice was simply things one can actually get from numerous general security overviews but with little help for developing an effective intranet security system.
I trust the Bitrix white paper “Web security is within your reach: 10 ways to keep hackers in check and ensure safe web resources” created by Marsel Nizam could be considered among the best sources of expert advice outlining the common approaches to secure websites and intranets.
The other jaw-dropping fact is that there are absolutely no reports focusing on this issue. I spend several hours browsing the web trying to get at least some facts and figures. No stats at all.
Perhaps, it would be a good idea for the Enterprise 2.0 community to make up its mind and do some research? As it requires input from as many sources as possible, vendors and consultants may join their efforts in gathering statistics from around the globe and get relevant results.
