Corporate IT managers are a bit bi-polar when it comes to network security, said a survey released this week at the Computer Security Institute's annual conference in Washington, D.C.

Just as an overwhelming majority of IT execs think that their networks are safer than they were a year ago, an even larger percentage admit in that attacks are on the rise.

The contradictory attitudes came as a shock to Q&A Research, the California-based market research firm which did the polling for security vendor Britestream.

The survey of 300 IT professionals in companies with annual revenues of more than $30 million revealed that a tad more than three out of four (76 percent) believe their networks are more secure today than a year ago. But a whopping 81 percent reported that attacks are on the upswing and 20 percent admitted that a hacker had gotten through their defenses to access their corporate network.

"At the same time [as they reported feeling more secure] IT managers reported a huge increase in attacks and a significant number of breaches," said Warren Pino, the chief executive officer of Q&A Research, in a statement.

"We were surprised that many IT managers are feeling fairly secure," Pino added. "Because they made investments in network security last year, two-thirds felt that their network is more secure than their competitors."

The perceived rise in security events by IT managers is backed up by statistics collected by anti-virus firms. Symantec's most recent bi-annual Internet Security Threat Report, for instance, found that the number of Windows-based viruses and worms had increased 450 percent in the first six months of 2004 compared to the same period last year.

Most often cited by the IT executives as their worst nightmare was viruses, the survey said. Nearly nine out of ten tagged malicious code as their biggest security concern over the last year. Other incidents, such as hacker attack, unauthorized access, and the theft of customer information, weren't far behind.

The bump in attacks and the boost the topic's getting in both the trade and general press has put it front and center not just for IT, but also the executive suite, the poll said. A large majority of the IT professionals surveyed said their chief executive officers shared their concern and opinions on security, with 70 percent of them claiming that they and their CEOs thought that their company was "somewhat" or "very" secure.

"But it's ironic that even with increased regulations regarding security compliance and senior management support, budgets for security have not increased," said Pino. According to those polled, the percentage of their IT budgets that they're setting aside for network security won't increase next year.

Not that they wouldn't if they had the money. Sixty-seven percent of the IT people polled would spend more to secure their network if they had the budget, said Pino.