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Most of the companies that worry about the security of their IT environment will opt to install the latest security products and believe that doing this will protect them from threats and security concerns. But according to a new ICSA Labs report, these security products may not after all perform as they promise.

 

The security market is highly competitive and many security companies are in a hurry to be the “biggest” and “best” in the market, which often causes them to overlook the fundamentals of a good security product, the ICSA Labs report claimed.

 

The “ICSA Labs Product Assurance Report” examines innumerable security products to derive its conclusion. According to the report, core product functionality accounted for 78 percent of initial test failure across various product categories. The failure of a product to completely and accurately log data was also considered to be a major reason for this problem.

 

“Our goal is to help vendors develop more secure products,” said George Japak, managing director of ICSA Labs and a co-author of the report. “When a product fails, we encourage vendors to view that as an opportunity to improve the product before it goes to market. In addition to benefiting the security industry, this open exchange of information can greatly benefit enterprises.”

 

Other reasons for this failure include inherent security problems; lack of certification with a trusted, established third party; lack of knowledge on the part of end users; untrue performance claims and numbers; and new, inexperienced companies coming up with security products.

 

Recently, the organization formed a consortium with the Medical Transcription Industry Association to come up with common standards and practices for creating and sharing digitized transcriptions of physician-dictated notes. The Medical Transcription Service Consortium or MTSC will develop a common framework for the digitization of transcribed dictated records such as interoperability standards for the seamless and secure data exchange among health care providers.