Enterprises that don't take proactive security steps will see their vulnerability-caused downtime triple in the next five years, a research firm said Monday. . . .
Enterprises that don't take proactive security steps will see their vulnerability-caused downtime triple in the next five years, a research firm said Monday.

In a just-released report, Gartner research fellow John Pescatore estimated that the current five percent of downtime attributed to security vulnerabilities will grow to 15 percent by 2008 unless firms work on security in their own development, and demand highly-secure software when they purchase commercial software.

"Increasing Internet activity, along with the use of Web services, wireless connections, and other new technologies, will lead to more vulnerable configurations," said Pescatore in a statement. "These vulnerabilities will cause increased downtime for organizations that don't push security concerns into their processes for software development and procurement."

Companies should lean on vendors to build more-secure software, Pescatore said, pressure in-house developers to reduce vulnerabilities in their custom-created software, and limit the attack surface of applications directly exposed to the Internet.

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