Only 23% Of Organizations Capable Of Responding Effectively To A Cyber Incident

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Retail clients experienced 2.7 times the number of attacks per client as finance.

Solutionary, an NTT Group company, has released the 2016 Global Threat Intelligence Report (GTIR) in which NTT Group has expanded its view of the threat landscape to include findings from key partners —– Lockheed Martin, Wapack Labs, Recorded Future, and the Center for Internet Security — to analyze the attacks, threats, and trends from the previous year.

The 2016 GTIR underscores practical application of a comprehensive, integrated solution and strategy is the key not only to enable efficiency and effectiveness, but also to support the security life cycle of the entire organization. The report states, “An effective security program understands the current threat environment, to detect what attackers are doing now.”

The study found only 23 percent of organizations capable of responding effectively to a cyber incident, leaving 77 percent with no capability to do the same. The majority of organizations purchase support services after an incident has occurred.

And, while the finance sector experience the highest volume of overall attacks, the retail sector experienced the most attacks per client. Retail was followed by the hospitality, leisure and entertainment, insurance, government, and manufacturing. Retail clients experienced 2.7 times the number of attacks as finance.

Spear phishing attacks accounted for approximately 17 percent of incident response activities supported in 2015, with many of the attacks targeting executives and finance personnel to trick them into paying fraudulent invoices.

The study found close to 21 percent of vulnerabilities detected in client networks were more than three years old, with some from as far back as 1999. The top 10 external vulnerabilities accounted for nearly 52 percent of all identified external vulnerabilities, while the top 10 internal vulnerabilities accounted for more than 78 percent of all internal vulnerabilities during 2015. Meanwhile, brute force attacks spiked 134 percent from 2014 levels.

Implementation of better migration tools, combined with fewer attacks, resulted in a drop in detections of denial of service (DoS) and distributed denial of service (DDoS) activities, as DoS/DDoS attack volume fell 39 percent from levels observed in 2014. However, extortion based on the victim’s paying to avoid or stop DDoS attacks became more prevalent.

The study also discovered all of the top 10 vulnerabilities targeted by exploit kits during 2015 are related to Adobe Flash. The number of publicized Flash vulnerabilities jumped by almost 312 percent over 2014 levels.