More than 50 percent of security professionals believe the endpoint is the source of the greatest security risk, and five times greater than both the network or the cloud, according to a new survey by Bromium “Black Hat 2015: State of Security”.

The survey highlights the current state of security within the IT Security industry and has found that while on overwhelming 90 percent of security professionals believe that their organisation would be more secure with flash disabled, it would also make them less productive. “One reason that the endpoint is the source of the greatest security risk is because of how difficult it is to balance security and productivity. Traditional security solutions have proven ineffective at mitigating this dilemma, putting our critical infrastructure at significant risk” said Clinton Karr, senior security strategist, Bromium. Key findings from “Black Hat 2015: State of Security” include: The Endpoint Is the Source of Greatest Security Risk – The majority of information security professionals cited the endpoint as the source of the greatest security risk (55 percent). The second most common response was insider threats (27 percent). Network (9 percent) and cloud (9 percent) were selected less frequently.

Security Professionals Pan Flash- The overwhelming majority of security professionals believe their organisation would be more secure if it disabled Flash (90 percent); however, 41 percent believe disabling Flash would make their organisation less productive or break critical applications.Implementing Security Patches Is a Challenge- The majority of organisations implement patches for zero-day vulnerabilities in software, such as Flash and Internet browsers, in the first week (50 percent first week; 10 percent first day); however, 22 percent take more than a month to deploy.

Critical Infrastructure Is at Risk of Cyber Attack- The majority of Black Hat attendees cited financial services (30 percent), energy (17 percent), healthcare (17 percent) and government (12 percent) as the verticals at the most risk of cyber attacks. Interestingly, financial services was also selected as the vertical that has implemented the best security practices (60 percent).Windows 10 Improves Security, But Not Enough- The majority of information security professionals believe Windows 10 improves security (56 percent), but many (33 percent) believe these improvements are not enough.