Tag: cybersecurity

Security Defenses are Not Adequate

We have just completed an extensive survey of security and compliance professionals in mid-sized and large organizations, asking about the current state of their cyber security defenses. We will soon be publishing a white paper discussing the results. Here’s a bit of what we found:

  • Fifty-five to 58 percent of organizations admitted that they are not fully protected against security threats like payment scams, spear phishing attacks and email spoofing.
  • Four of the top five concerns that security and compliance professionals have in the context of their organizations’ cyber security are focused on email-related threats.
  • Sixty-five percent of security and compliance professionals admitted that their organization has suffered a successful attack and/or data breach during the past 12 months, with the most common being a phishing attack successfully infecting systems on their network with malware (28 percent), and a targeted email attack launched from a compromised account successfully infecting an endpoint with malware (25 percent).
  • Corporate executives represent 16 percent of the attack surface in the typical mid-sized and large organization, despite the fact that they account for only two percent of the total number of employees.
  • Forty-two percent of those surveyed told us that their anti-ransomware defenses are either not improving the catch rate for ransomware attempts over time or the catch rate is actually going down.
  • Only 28 percent of those surveyed believe that their end-user training regimen focused on web surfing best practices is “very good” or “excellent”; only 39 percent believe that their user training for detecting and addressing phishing and other unwanted emails is this good.
  • The average cyber security budget will increase by 7.4 percent in 2018 compared to last year; 67 percent of organizations are increasing their budget and only two percent are decreasing it.

Please let us know if you’d like an advance copy of the white paper.

Here are some upcoming security conferences that should be on your radar:

  • InfoSecWorld, Lake Buena Vista, Florida (March 19-21)
  • Black Hat Asia, Singapore (March 20-23)
  • RSA Conference, San Francisco, California (April 16-20)

Best Practices for Dealing With Phishing and Ransomware

We have just published a white paper on phishing and ransomware that we welcome you to download and review. Here are some of the key takeaways from the paper:

  • Both phishing and crypto  ransomware are increasing at the rate of several hundred percent per quarter, a trend that Osterman Research believes will continue for at least the next 18 to 24 months.
  • The vast majority of organizations have been victimized by phishing, ransomware and a variety of security-related attacks during the past 12 months. In fact, phishing and ransomware are among the four leading concerns expressed by security-focused decision makers as discovered by Osterman Research in the survey conducted for this white paper.
  • Security spending will increase significantly in 2017 as organizations realize they need to protect against phishing, ransomware and the growing variety of other threats they face.
  • Most organizations are not seeing improvements in the security solutions they have deployed and in the security practices they follow. While many of these solutions are effective, most are not improving over time, in many cases because internal staff may not have the expertise to improve the performance of these solutions over time. On balance, only two in five of these solutions and practices are considered “excellent”.
  • Security awareness training is a key area for improvement in protecting organizations against phishing and ransomware, since our research found that organizations with well-trained employees are less likely to be infected.
  • There are a variety of best practices that organizations should follow in order to minimize their potential for becoming victims of phishing and ransomware. Among these best practices are implementing security awareness training, deploying systems that can detect and eliminate phishing and ransomware attempts, searching for and remediating security vulnerabilities in corporate systems, maintaining good backups, and using good threat intelligence.

You can download the paper here.

As an aside, I will be attending the Virus Bulletin International Conference next week in Denver and encourage you to do likewise if you’re at all focused on security. I have been to this event before and can vouch for its tremendous value as a place to learn about trends in cyber security and to advance your education about all things security.