NEWARK, NJ – Many North America organizations are exposing themselves to significant security and financial risks and thereby undermining the effectiveness of the average IT worker, according to a new report from corporate software reseller Softchoice.

One in 16 corporate PCs in a little over 200 companies across the United States and Canada did not have anti-virus software. In other findings:

23 percent of PCs were missing major operating system service packs

49 percent of PCs show moderate to severe infestations of ‘malware’

39 percent of PCs were beyond stated system retirement age ? 64 percent of corporations were violating their own operating system deployment policies

These 200 companies were surveyed on their official IT policies, practices and standards. Each organization on average had about 400 PCs.

In addition, Softchoice examined the inventory data from about 90,000 desktops and servers in these organizations. The two information sources were compared in order to identify the gaps between the policies and what was actually happening on the desktop.

Softchoice clients were then provided the results, stated Dean Williams, a services consultant for Softchoice and the author of the report. Our hope with this study is that we can allow a broader reach of users to learn from the common stumbling blocks.

“What we have seen is a breakdown within IT departments when it comes to verifying the healthy state of their technology assets,” said Edwin Jansen, manager of the Softchoice services group responsible for the study.

“Our findings show that many organizations either don’t realize the value of maintaining effective IT asset management practices or they don’t think they need to be worried.

In addition, Softchoice discovered a gap between how secure people perceive they are and what protections have actually been deployed to the office desktop itself.

“This disconnect is translating directly into serious risks, even for organizations that have invested substantially in network and desktop security solutions,” said Williams.

Softchoice also found that 39 percent of PCs were beyond system retirement age. Williams stated that support costs begin to offset any capital gains when an office PC has been around the organization for 42 months.

“The popular wisdom seems to be that keeping a PC in use longer means less money spent,” added Williams. “But issues such as increasing support costs, decreased resale value and even potential costs for disposal demonstrate that managing a predetermined retirement age for PCs has significant benefits.

Williams stressed however that an older PC is not necessarily a less secure machine. The issues of security and maintaining older systems are separate.

He attributed the mismatch between policies and practices to the current situation where corporate departments are mostly filling holes in dikes in terms of maintenance rather than in engage in long term asset management.

Williams estimates 80 per cent of a corporate IT costs involve maintenance.

The irony is, he added, customers can save a sizeable proportion of their maintenance costs by focusing on the security and age of their IT assets.

This column was written by Paul Weinberg of eChannelLine.Com.