UK companies remain more concerned by external threats to their network than internal threats as the number of workers accessing networks remotely continues to rise, research has found.

The National Gateway Security Survey 2008 was carried out by distributor Wick Hill and sponsored by firewall vendor WatchGuard Technologies. 341 senior IT workers were interviewed about the set-up of their network and their security priorities.

Companies' top security priority for this year is to secure their network from external attack and was cited as important by 79 per cent of respondents. Having secure remote access was cited by three quarters, gateway resiliency and securing the network internally were cited by 70 per cent and authenticating remote users by 67 per cent.

A total of 61 per cent of respondents reported the number of remote users was increasing, with 48 per cent already having more than 150. A further 45 per cent claimed the number of virtual private networks (VPN) was increasing, with 43 per cent claiming numbers of secure socket layer (SSL) users were on the rise.

In addition 49 per cent of companies claimed voice over IP (VoIP) users were increasing while half declared numbers of employees using wireless was on the rise. High availability was cited as the most important factor in choosing a firewall or unified threat management (UTM) product, with 90 per cent of respondents claiming it was of key importance. Secure authentication was cited by 84 per cent.

Performance was the most important factor in purchasing IT security products and was cited as of key importance by 90 per cent of respondents. Reseller knowledge was cited by 74 per cent, price by 73 per cent, upgradeability by 67 per cent and relationship with supplier by 67 per cent.