Nearly 57 percent Indian IT managers can’t identify network traffic while 61 percent don’t know how their bandwidth is consumed, a new report said on Wednesday, adding that the majority of Indian IT managers have legal liabilities when it comes to unidentified traffic at their workplaces.

According to British IT security company Sophos’ global survey titled The Dirty Secrets of Network Firewalls, 89 percent of Indian IT heads opined that stopping malware threats have become harder over the last year

“While 94 percent agree that stopping ransomware should be a top priority in organisations, a lack of effective application visibility is a serious security concern for 90 percent of Indian businesses,” said the report.

The survey polled more than 2,700 IT decision makers across mid-sized businesses in 10 countries worldwide, including India, the US, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, the UK, Australia, Japan and South Africa.

“Controlling network traffic is an essential role of every firewall yet, 61 percent IT managers can’t tell you how their bandwidth is being consumed,” said Sunil Sharma, managing director Sales at Sophos India & SAARC.

“If you can’t see everything on your network, you can’t ever be confident that your organisation is protected from threats. IT professionals have been ‘flying blind’ for too long and cybercriminals take advantage of this,” Sharma noted.

About 79 percent of IT heads face security risks from unwanted or unnecessary apps.

While 72 percent want to see applications by risk levels through their organisation’s firewall, 60 percent concerned on productivity loss due to unwanted apps and 52 percent had legal liability or compliance concerns due to potentially illegal content,” the report said.

Considering the debilitating impact cyber attacks can have on a business, it’s unsurprising that 90 percent of respondents agree that a lack of application visibility is a serious security concern.

The survey further stated that 61 percent would like to see better perimeter security in their organisation’s network firewall along with better threat visibility and better protection.

“Ineffective firewalls are costing you time and money. On an average, organisations are spending 7 working days to remediate infected machines,” said Sharma.

A single network breach often leads to the compromise of multiple computers, so the faster you can stop the infection from spreading the more you limit the damage and time needed to clean it up.

“Companies are looking for the kind of next-generation, integrated network and endpoint protection that can stop advanced threats and prevent an isolated incident from turning into a widespread outbreak,” Sharma informed.