Security still no. 1 issue

It’s the technology headache that just won’t go away. For the third consecutive year, information security tops the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ annual list of IT concerns.

“Because our work and personal lives are now inextricably linked to information systems, security will always be top of mind,” says Roman Kepczyk, chairman of the AICPA’s information technology executive committee.

Second on the 2005 list is electronic data management — also known as the paperless office — which moves up from third place last year. It knocks spam technology, the use of technology to reduce or eliminate unwanted e-mail, down to fourth place.

“We’ve seen major improvements to filtering systems, which have allowed us to bring spam under greater control. This is most likely the reason that spam technology doesn’t command the importance it did in the previous survey,” says Kepczyk.

In third place is data integration, the ability to update one field and have it automatically synchronize between multiple databases, while disaster recovery rounds out the top five.

There are also two issues that make their debut on this year’s top-10 list. One is authentication technologies (No. 8): the hardware, software, processes and procedures to protect a person’s privacy and identity from internal and external threats, including biometric authentication. The other is storage technologies (No. 9), including mass storage, CD-recordable, DVD, data compression and electronic document storage, as well as small personal storage devices such as USB drives.

Some more familiar items on the list are collaboration and messaging applications (No. 6), wireless technologies (No. 7) and learning and training competency (No. 10).