The latest edition of the Application Usage and Risk Report from Palo Alto Networks is now available.
The Application Usage and Risk Report (5th Edition, Spring 2010) provides insight into the applications and associated risks on nearly 350 enterprise networks worldwide. The global view allowed us to look at, for the first time, application usage patterns from both a geographical (EMEA, NAM, APAC) and a vertical market perspective (Healthcare, Financial Services, Universities). Key findings include:
- Application usage is remarkably consistent, across all regions, and within industries. From a vertical market perspective, and even regionally, that same application usage poses very different risks for different industries and different geographies. In other words, a given application mix poses wildly different risks for a financial services organization vs. a university.
- Intensity of Enterprise 2.0 application usage continues to increase. Enterprise 2.0 applications are being used at very high levels across all organizations. Overshadowing the frequency of usage is the increased intensity of usage, measured by bandwidth consumed on a per organization basis.
- Applications are not always what they seem to be. Almost two-thirds of the applications found (65%) can hop from port to port, use port 80, or port 443. Many are either client-server or peer-to-peer based, a fact that dispels the assertion that port 80/443 equals browser-based traffic. In addition, the data shows that tunneling applications, for good or bad, expand far beyond SSH, SSL, and VPN (IPSec or SSL) related applications.
Check out the key findings and other interesting datapoints now!