Naperville, IL – June 07, 2018
Outpost24, an innovator in identifying and managing cyber-security exposure, today announced the results of a survey of 155 IT professionals, which revealed that 71 percent believe they can successfully hack any organization using one of four common attack vectors, with social engineering being the most popular choice.
The survey, which was carried out at the RSA Conference in April 2018, asked respondents about the techniques they would use to hack an organization and 34 percent revealed that would use social engineering, 23 percent said they would enter via insecure web applications, 21 percent said via mobile devices while a further 21 percent said they would enter via a public cloud. Survey respondents were also extremely confident in their attack vectors, with 71 percent saying they would be successful.
Commenting on the survey, Bob Egner, CMO at Outpost24, said: “Our study shows how confident IT professionals are that most of today’s organizations are not as secure as they might believe, and will be easy to attack. Hackers understand there are key areas of technology which organizations will often overlook in terms of cyber-security and they will target these weaknesses first. A comprehensive security posture covers the full stack - network infrastructure, cloud environments, applications, mobile devices and even people. The study also demonstrates that once again people are viewed as the weakest link, so it is important that security teams understand the critical role they play in educating their staff on cyber-security issues.”
The study also asked respondents about their use of commercial clouds, like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Findings revealed that 75 percent of respondents use a commercial cloud to host their organization’s data. When respondents were asked if they use the same security in their cloud environment as they do to their owned assets or data centres, 41 percent said they did, 38 percent said they didn’t use the same security, while 22 percent were not sure.
“What many of the IT professionals are clearly not aware of is the evolving security requirements for cloud compared to on-premise environments. This essentially means that the tools and techniques an organization uses to secure its on-premise data will be different from the tools they use in the cloud. While some security vendors may recommend using traditional end-point security in the cloud, the reality is it won’t be as effective. Organizations should instead look to vendors that specialize in security in the cloud,” continued Bob Egner.
For more insights into the study, download the full RSA survey report
About Outpost24
Outpost24 is a leading cyber assessment company focused on enabling its customers to achieve maximum value from their evolving technology investments. By leveraging our full stack security insights to reduce attack surface for any architecture, Outpost24 customers continuously improve their security posture with the least effort.
Over 2,000 customers in more than 40 countries around the world trust Outpost24 to assess their devices, networks, applications, cloud and container environments and report compliance status for government, industry sector, or internal regulations.
Founded in 2001, Outpost24 serves leading organizations across a wide range of segments including financial and insurance, government, healthcare, retail, telecommunications, technology, and manufacturing.
Learn more security information on our website, get security news, trends and insights at https://outpost24.com/blog, or follow us on Twitter @outpost24
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