Note: this blog is a mirror of my HP Labs Blog, on the same topic, accessible at: http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Research-on-Security-and/bg-p/163

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

National Security vs. Privacy?

This article provides an overview of a recent survey conducted by Quest Software involving 474 employees of federal, state, local and municipal agencies:

“At least according to a survey conducted in January by Quest Software among 474 employees of federal, state, local and municipal agencies, 53% considered national security more important than personal privacy. Only 33.8% felt that personal privacy concerns were more important than national security. 15% of the federal respondents came from DHS, DOJ and HHS …

The survey indicates that although most government IT professionals (69%) believe that identity management is “very important” to their organization or agency, even more overwhelmingly believe its importance will increase (72%) in the next five years. A large majority of government IT professionals report that their organization or agency has complied with the following steps: secured information systems (76%), secured personnel information (72%), and secured access to facilities (75%).”

This article also reports these interesting comments by Paul Garver, Quest Software vice president:

“I would expect this type of finding if we had a large Defense Department audience, but our audience was mostly civilian agencies. A large part of the government’s position deals with national trust and security. This finding is a result of the focus on national security by so many civilian agencies.”

The final part of the article provides the highlights of the survey …

--- NOTE: my original HP blog can be found here ---

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