The Danger Lies WithinThe Danger Lies Within

Despite the mint that companies spend on firewalls, intrusion-detection systems, and antivirus software to secure their systems, a new study reveals that roughly a third of all network outages are self-inflicted.

According to a Yankee Group survey of 229 business and government administrators who manage more than 50 networked devices, 31% of all network outages are caused by human error. It's no wonder: Half of the companies had unauthorized changes to their networks within the past year; 70% used shared-password access control for network devices; and 83% had no automated way to correlate network downtime with configuration changes.

Tsk, tsk, says Al Hauf, marketing director at authentication vendor Gold Wire Technology, noting that companies could eliminate a third of their downtime simply by improving

how they control configuration changes. The other culprits: problems caused by phone companies or ISPs (35%), power failures (14%), hardware glitches (12%), and unresolved problems (8%).