Recently, Palo Alto Networks released the 2024 Unit 42 Attack Surface Threat Report unveiling the biggest risks facing the growing attack surface and key recommendations for organizations to strengthen their security postures.
Key points from the report:
- Attack surface change inevitably leads to exposures: Across industries, attack surfaces are always in a state of flux.
- On average, an organization’s attack surface has over 300 new services every month.
- These additions account for nearly 32% of new high or critical cloud exposures for organizations.
- Opportunities for lateral movement and data exfiltration are abundant: Just 3 categories of exposures – IT and Networking Infrastructure, Business Operations Applications, and Remote Access Services – account for 73% of high-risk exposures across the organizations
- These can be exploited for lateral movement and data exfiltration.
- Critical IT and security services are dangerously exposed to the internet: Over 23% of exposures involve critical IT and security infrastructure, opening doors to opportunistic attacks.
- These include vulnerabilities in application-layer protocols like SNMP, NetBIOS, PPTP, and internet-accessible administrative login pages of routers, firewalls, VPNs, and other core networking and security appliances.
- Industry Attack Surface Outlook
- Analysis revealed that the media and entertainment industry experienced the highest rate of new services added, exceeding 7,000 per month.
- The telecommunications, insurance, pharma and life sciences sectors also faced substantial increases, with over 1,000 new services added to their attack surfaces.
- Critical industries such as financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing saw their attack surfaces add over 200 new services every month.
- For the past three years, Unit 42 analysis has consistently identified professional services, healthcare, high technology, finance, manufacturing, wholesale and retail as the top 6 industries to which we’ve provided IR services.
You can read the report here.
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This entry was posted on August 20, 2024 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Palo Alto Networks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Unit 42 Research Unveils Biggest Attack Surface Risks
Recently, Palo Alto Networks released the 2024 Unit 42 Attack Surface Threat Report unveiling the biggest risks facing the growing attack surface and key recommendations for organizations to strengthen their security postures.
Key points from the report:
You can read the report here.
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This entry was posted on August 20, 2024 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Palo Alto Networks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.