The failure of corporate chiefs to make security a priority and a reactive approach to data protection has left many companies vulnerable to attack, especially via emerging technologies such as smart phones and cloud computing, according to a survey of information technologists. published on Tuesday.

The Worldwide State of the Endpoint 2010 study, conducted by the Ponemon Institute and funded by security firm Lumension, used data from more than 1,400 interviews of information-security practitioners and nearly 1,600 IT-operations professionals from the U.S., Germany, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. The report found that 56 percent of respondents said that mobile devices posed a significant security risk to their organization and 49 percent stated that the company's CEO did not give strong support to security initiatives.

"The (survey) provides still more evidence that companies are racing to adopt new technologies faster than they can understand their impacts on data security and develop effective use and integration policies," Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute, said in a statement. "As a result, networks are growing more and more complex, making the task of securing sensitive data more and more difficult."

The survey also found that 60 percent of companies were using cloud computing in some manner, and seven out of 10 companies would increase their use of cloud technologies.

The separation between security and operation also caused problems for network defenders. The information-security groups in nearly a third of companies fail to collaborate with their operational counterparts, the survey found.

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