March 23, 2005 - (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – Sybari Software, today released results from a survey of more than 160 IT managers and administrators on the usage and security of collaboration portals and servers. The results of this survey reflect the growing dependence on portals such as Microsoft SharePoint, though also a lack of awareness around protecting these resources against viruses, worms and malicious code.
Document collaboration systems are quickly becoming effective, user-friendly applications that form a central workplace for organizations and teams. Using collaboration systems provides companies with a single place to access multiple applications such as Word documents and spreadsheets, business intelligence and project management systems, and existing line-of-business applications, including third party and industry-specific programs.
The Sybari survey found that more than 80 percent of companies polled already have or are planning to utilize a corporate intranet or collaboration portal. The results indicated that although 93 percent of the companies have file server protection, just 61 percent thought that virus protection is necessary for their installed collaboration portal servers. These statistics display a clear gap in awareness around potential threats that can leverage collaboration environments to propagate malicious code throughout a company’s entire network.
While collaboration systems reduce messaging overhead, they also bypass antivirus and content scanning currently deployed in the vast majority of e-mail environments and file servers. Survey responses indicated that 41 percent of network administrators view collaboration portal antivirus technology as redundant, assuming their desktop-specific antivirus products will check for exploits and vulnerabilities. Some collaboration systems, however, allow users to check out and alter documents without ever storing the information on their desktops. Desktop antivirus programs don’t have the opportunity to scan these documents. And if infected, these documents can propagate viruses and worms throughout the organization.
"Collaboration systems have allowed employees to increase productivity and reduce redundancies and errors, however they have also become an easy access point for viruses and malicious attacks that can expose confidential information, destroy a company’s infrastructure and waste time, money and resources," said Joe Licari, vice president of product management at Sybari Software.
"With Sybari’s Antigen, companies can protect their networks from attack and use its ability to scan for content within a document to help ensure regulation compliance and prevent sensitive data from being distributed outside of the organization."
Sybari’s Antigen for SharePoint provides administrators with the critical tools needed to fully protect the files and information being shared throughout an organization. Antigen 8.0 for SharePoint delivers a variety of new features including keyword scanning within documents, enhanced incident reporting, Hot Upgrade capability and support for the Sybari Enterprise Manager.
For companies interested in learning more about secure collaboration, Sybari is offering a webcast entitled Enabling Secure Collaboration in the Workplace on March 22nd at 12pm EST. Please visit www.sybari.com/spwebcast for more information.
