Companies Struggle to Deal With Zero-Day Attacks

By Samuel Greengard

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Companies Struggle to Deal With Zero-Day Attacks
Full-On Assault

In 2014, organizations in the study faced an average of 106 downloads of unknown malware per hour. That compares to only 2.2 downloads per hour in 2013.
Money for Nothing

42% of businesses suffered mobile security incidents costing more than $250,000 to remediate.
At a Loss

The study found that the loss of proprietary information increased 71% during the past three years.
Risky business

96% of the organizations were using at least one high-risk application on their network—a 10% increase over the previous year.
Battling the Bots

Cyber-criminals continue to use bots to amplify and accelerate the spread of malware, and 83% of organizations studied were infected with bots in 2014.
Mobile Madness

Organizations with more than 2,000 devices on their network face a 50% chance that there are at least six infected or targeted mobile devices on the network.
BYOD = Risk

72% of IT providers said their top mobile security challenge is protecting corporate information. 67% said their next biggest challenge is managing personal devices that store corporate and personal data.
At a Loss

81% of the organizations that were analyzed suffered a data loss incident—up 41% from 2013.
Poor Hosts

According to the report, a host within the enterprise accesses a malicious Website every 24 seconds. Unknown malware is downloaded every 34 seconds.
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The daily drumbeat of breaches and cyber-security attacks has become overwhelming for business and IT leaders. Yet, despite all the news and information about attack methods and protection strategies, many organizations are still struggling to keep up with the risks and dangers. At the center of the problem: zero-day risks. A recently released report from CheckPoint Software Technologies, "Check Point 2015 Security Report," snaps the issue into sharp focus. It found, among other things, that an incredible uptick in zero-day attacks occurred. These were directed at both networks and mobile devices. What's more, the cost of these events is on the rise, loss of proprietary information is a growing problem, and organizations have an increasing number of high-risk applications on their networks. "Today's cyber-criminals are sophisticated and ruthless," warned Amnon Bar-Lev, president of Check Point. "They prey on the weaknesses in a network, approaching any security layer as an open invitation to try to hack it." The security report is based on collaborative research and in-depth analysis of over 300,000 hours of monitored network traffic, from more than 16,000 threat prevention gateways and 1 million smartphones.

This article was originally published on 2015-07-27

Samuel Greengard writes about business and technology for Baseline, CIO Insight and other publications. His most recent book is The Internet of Things (MIT Press, 2015).

Companies Struggle to Deal With Zero-Day Attacks

Companies Struggle to Deal With Zero-Day Attacks

Full-On Assault

Money for Nothing

At a Loss

Risky business

Battling the Bots

Mobile Madness

BYOD = Risk

At a Loss

Poor Hosts