Nearly half of consumers experiencing website security alerts ignore the alert and proceed to do business on the site, putting at risk their personal and financial data, according to an online survey of U.S. Internet users released today. Nearly an equal number abandon the site immediately after seeing an alert, potentially costing businesses millions in lost transactions and brand erosion. In addition, an automated encryption certificate discovery across the Fortune 1000, performed in conjunction with the consumer survey as part of the Venafi, Inc.–commissioned "Encryption Study 2007," shows prolific problems with encryption maintenance and configuration, which is a significant cause of these confusing security alerts. As many as 14 percent of the certificates examined in the discovery were expired — nearly 70 percent more than Venafi found in 2005.
The consumer survey conducted by NSON Opinion Research and underwritten by Venafi shows 91 percent of the more than 1,000 respondents have seen a security alert, with 86 percent reporting they see them at least every few months. These alerts, designed to warn users about the authenticity of a website, appear when a website’s encryption certificate is expired, is not trusted by the browser or does not match the location of the site the user is visiting–almost always the result of poor encryption management.
"Although companies are deploying more encryption to protect consumers, they simply are not doing an adequate job of maintaining it," said Trell Rohovit, president and CEO of Venafi. "This mismanagement causes confusion, and according to our study, is a significant stumbling block for users of online services and a costly problem for organizations who rely heavily on the web to efficiently deliver services to their customers."
While alerts triggered by expired certificates are disconcerting, security alerts caused by mismatches or untrusted certificates can also be caused by someone trying to impersonate a website–such as might occur in a phishing attack. In these cases, a user could be sending their confidential data to a thief. Despite these risks, 41 percent said they ignore the alert and continue to do business on the site.
The same challenges that exist when a user interacts with a website occur when two servers interact with each other, however servers never ignore security alerts.
Citing Marc Massar, a security architect at First Data Corp., Dow Jones Newswires reported that "many business-to-business interactions are handled by software applications that will automatically cancel a transaction if a warning alert appears. There's [nobody] to say yea or nay."
Other findings of the consumer survey include:
Using its automated enterprise discovery system, Venafi collected publicly accessible SSL certificate data from 13,000 servers owned by Fortune 1000 companies with at least one server for 997 of the 1000 companies. In all, more than 5,500 certificates were discovered.
Other discovery findings include:
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