Avecto, a Windows privilege management company, conducted a survey of 365 IT professionals at the McAfee (News - Alert) Focus 2012 conference in Las Vegas. The survey revealed some serious concerns that IT professionals have about their company’s policies on privileges and some interesting insights into the rising trend of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device).

Of those surveyed, 84 percent responded that their organizations need better control of user privileges on company machines. The majority—45 percent—responded that malware attacks are the most compelling reason for reducing the number of privileged accounts; nine percent responded that the most important reason is combating insider threats and another nine percent responded that the most important reason is external compliance.

Paul Kenyon, the co-founder and chief operating officer of Avecto, says this is particularly important as we look to the New Year. In the future, he says, “the rising threat of sophisticated malware will drive more companies to look into more proactive defense-in-depth security measures”. Some of these measures might include privilege management and application control.

Kenyon says that, more and more, CTOs are realizing that there are few employees, including IT admins, who require fully-privileged accounts to be productive. This, he says, will eventually result in “the demise of the admin right”.

BYOD has become a widely discussed issue as of late; however, Kenyon does not see this as a lasting trend, predicting that it will continue to be hampered by security concerns, and “it will fail to live up to the hype”. 

As a result, he anticipates that corporate devices will be making their return in the near future, perhaps leading to “more choose-your-own-device (CYOD) than bring-your-own-device”. As of right now, 70 percent of IT professionals surveyed responded that their biggest concern with BYOD is security. If Kenyon’s insights and the survey results reflect the feelings of IT professionals around the country, BYOD stands to be a short-lived trend, and “least privilege” will, most likely, describe the privileges that most people hold at work.

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