VietNamNet Bridge – The majority (81 percent) of agencies and organizations in Vietnam allow their workers access to local networks with their personal mobile devices, while 74 percent do not have any solution to ensure information security and control mobile devices.

Of the 74 percent of organizations which do not apply any solutions to protect their information networks, only 41 percent wish to find reasonable solutions, while 33 percent said they do not have any plan to deal with the problem in the near future.

Analysts warned that the attacks to information systems via smartphones have been occurring in Vietnam.

Ptracker, an eavesdropping software, has been found installed into 14,000 smartphones in Vietnam. Meanwhile, Vietnamese businesses and organizations still think there is no need to waste money on security solutions.

According to Vu Quoc Thanh, deputy chair of the Vietnam Information Security Association (VNISA), which conducted a survey of 475 organizations, 28 percent of them could not say for sure if they were attacked in 2014. Only 13.3 percent of the organizations said they knew about the attacks and recorded the attacks.

Thanh noted that the figures show little improvement if compared with 2013, but a step back if compared with 2012 (19 percent) and 2011 (17 percent).

“In the past, organizations were self-confident, saying they could record the attacks. But they tend to be more hesitant when answering the question over the last two years,” he noted.

There could be two reasons behind the hesitancy. First, hackers have become more “professional”, using more sophisticated tricks to deploy attacks. And second, the organizations’ awareness of the danger has been heightened.

Twenty percent of the surveyed organizations said they fear that escalating tensions in the East Sea may cause problems to their information security.

The survey has found that Vietnamese organizations tend to spend more money on the labor force, security software and security policies to protect their information systems, though the budgets remain very modest.

Forty-five organizations and agencies have officers responsible for information technology (IT) matters, a slight increase from last year’s 43 percent, while the proportion of agencies with no IT officers has decreased from 28 percent last year to 22 percent.

Regarding anti-virus software, the report says Kaspersky is the most popular in Vietnam, used by 32 percent of organizations. The followers are BKAV, a 100 percent Vietnamese product (25 percent), Symantec (10 percent). McAfee, BitDefender, CMC and Trend Micro have also been mentioned.

Forty-five percent of organizations spend less than 5 percent of total spending on information security, while the recommended rate is 10 percent.

Trong Cam