According to the latest Yankee Group 2004 Enterprise Security Services survey of US enterprises, firewalls and antivirus are the two most highly valued security technologies. The poll also found that Symantec, Cisco and Network Associates (which has since changed its trading name to McAfee) rank as the three most trusted security product vendors.
Primary research by the analyst group shows that 43 percent of the 400 US enterprises surveyed named Symantec as one of their top three most trusted, followed closely by Cisco. Network Associates was found to have received the third highest votes in the rankings of 20, a strong improvement over its 2003 survey ranking.
"Survey results show that firewalls combined with antivirus are the two most highly valued security solutions," said Phebe Waterfield, Yankee Group Security Solutions & Services analyst.
"However, the lower ranking of firewall vendors Checkpoint, SonicWall and NetScreen compared to antivirus and security players Cisco, Network Associates and Symantec demonstrates that vendors need to do more than network security to gain an enterprise's trust."
She went on to say that, surprisingly, Checkpoint, a well-established security brand, barely made the top 10 selected, trailing behind less "security branded" vendors such as Oracle and Microsoft.
"Network equipment vendors, including Siemens, 3Com, Nortel and Lucent, achieved surprising high rankings. 3Com in particular has done a great job creating a strong security position in just the last year," Waterfield said.
