-- Respondents worry more about one-time security issues, such as reduced operations, interrupted service delivery and a loss of privacy around breaches, rather than ongoing threats from remote access, or unknown application software and operating security system flaws. -- Respondents cite the amount of required user training as a top-level barrier, an indicator of the continued evolution of threats and the importance of staff in ensuring safety. Training has become an increasingly important issue since 2005, up approximately 19 percent, according to the survey. -- Consistent with last year's results, management awareness and support was second only to funding and budget as a challenge to overall compliance with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). -- Attention to FISMA appears to have peaked in the 2006 survey. Achieving FISMA compliance and green status in all categories of the President's Management Agenda, and improving GAO FISMA scorecard grades, were higher priorities in 2006. -- While funding remains the top barrier, the existing security architecture is a major barrier to success, as respondents believe integrated network security is critical to improving their agencies' posture."IT managers across the federal government clearly want integrated and embedded security in their networks to improve their agencies' security, productivity and business performance," said Gerald Charles, Jr., executive advisor, Internet Business Solutions Group, Cisco. "Increasing mobility, social media services and Web 2.0 are further driving the need for a pervasive security approach and for proactive, compliant and integrated network management tools and services." This is the third security-focused survey conducted since November 2005 on behalf of Cisco. The survey was written and fielded in September 2007 by the e-Gov Institute and reviewed by Market Connections, a federal information technology market research firm. The Web-based research effort targeted more than 200 federal IT decision makers from more than 30 civilian and military agencies involved in network security solutions http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/docs/gov/cisco_security_report_11_1_2007.pdf. Since 2005, Cisco has issued survey results on Internet Protocol version 6 (in June 2006 and June 2007), unified communications (June 2007), and enterprise architecture (September 2006), in addition to the security surveys. About Cisco Cisco (
Contact Information: Media Relations Janis Langley Cisco 512 402-9635 jalangle@cisco.com Investor Relations Liz Lemon Cisco 408 527-8452 lemon@cisco.com