The results of a survey on the ubiquity of unauthorized software in enterprise and government systems have been announced by the pioneer and leader in Enterprise Application Whitelisting, Bit9, Inc. 77 percent of the respondents have software usage policies in place, yet an alarming 37 percent have found unauthorized software running on more than half of their computers according to the survey of more than 250 IT managers.

The survey targeted organizations in excess of $1 billion. It revealed that the policies are not being enforced in many organizations, while a majority of organizations have policies prohibiting unauthorized software. It's no surprise that only 34 percent of survey respondents report feeling confident that in 2009 their business will be protected from harm caused by unauthorized or malicious software, with software usage policies so frequently disregarded.

Additional findings from the Bit9 Unauthorized Software Survey include the following:
- Unauthorized or malicious software causes up to 25 percent of user downtime
- The most problematic unauthorized software is spyware (49 percent) and malicious software not caught by antivirus (44 percent)
- also 29 percent of respondents do not have a software usage policy that prohibits employees from downloading software to their computers at their discretion

To prevent unauthorized software from being downloaded and running in organizations, results from the survey underscore the need for companies to adopt proactive approaches to endpoint security, such as Application Whitelisting.