One in 10 IT professionals cheat on their audits

That's the top finding of a survey by Tufin Technologies, of 242 IT professionals, mainly from organisations employing 1,000 to 5,000 employees. Shockingly, almost one third of those same individuals also only audit their firewalls once every five years. So it's not surprising to find out that 36% of IT professionals admit their firewall rule bases are a mess – thus increasing their susceptibility to hackers, network crashes and compliance violations. However it isn't all bad news; compared to a similar survey conducted in 2009, the number of people admitting to cheating has halved. Among those who have cheated, lack of time and resources are cited as the main reasons, underlining the ever increasing pressure on today's IT departments. Also, with 25% responding that firewall audits take a week to conduct, attempting to avoid this painful process is understandable, if not excusable.