“Weak Links” in organizations add to dynamic threat landscape, says Cisco Security Report
2014-08-11The networking giant Cisco has revealed its Midyear Security Report 2014. The report examined the “weak links” in organizations that contribute to the increasingly dynamic threat landscape. These weak links – which could be outdated software, bad code, abandoned digital properties, or user errors – contribute to the adversary’s ability to exploit vulnerabilities with methods such as DNS queries, exploit kits, amplification attacks, point-of-sale (POS) system compromise, malvertizing, ransomware, infiltration of encryption protocols, social engineering and “life event” spam.
The report also shows that focus on only high-profile vulnerabilities rather than on high-impact, common and stealthy threats puts these organizations at greater risk. By proliferating attacks against low-profile legacy applications and infrastructure with known weaknesses, malicious actors are able to escape detection as security teams focus instead on boldface vulnerabilities, such as Heartbleed.
For this report, researchers closely examined 16 large multinational organizations, which, as of 2013, collectively controlled over $4 trillion in assets with revenues in excess of $300 billion.
John N. Stewart, Senior Vice-President, Chief Security Officer, Cisco, said, “Many companies are innovating their future using the Internet. To succeed in this rapidly-emerging environment, executive leadership needs to embrace and manage, in business terms, the associated cyber risks. Analyzing and understanding weaknesses within the security chain rests largely upon the ability of individual organizations, and industry, to create awareness about cyber risk at the most senior levels, including Boards – making cybersecurity a business process, not about technology. To cover the entire attack continuum – before, during, and after an attack – organizations today must operate security solutions that operate everywhere a threat can manifest itself.”
The Cisco 2014 Midyear Security Report examines threat intelligence and cybersecurity trends for the first half of 2014 and was developed by security research experts who are part of the Cisco Collective Security Intelligence (CSI) ecosystem. Cisco CSI is shared across multiple security solutions and provides industry-leading security protections and efficacy. In addition to threat researchers, CSI is driven by intelligence infrastructure, product and service telemetry, public and private feeds and the open-source community.
See What’s Next in Tech With the Fast Forward Newsletter
Tweets From @varindiamag
Nothing to see here - yet
When they Tweet, their Tweets will show up here.