Internal threats in large companies were more dangerous than viruses

 In 2013, the incidents in the field of information security took place in all major companies whose executives were interviewed in the study .

Big companies do not like to talk about their failures in the field of security, because it undermines their credibility. Therefore, in Russia, where there are no laws on the disclosure of incidents  because there are very few statistics on this issue. And since there are no statistics, it seems that there is no problem.

But a new study of Positive Technologies shows that in 2013, incidents in the field of information security took place in all major companies whose executives were interviewed during the study. And more than half of the companies incidents have led to significant problems, including financial losses.

It should be noted that earlier research center Positive Technologies published mostly technical studies, including statistics on penetration testing and vulnerability analysis applications. But turn any potential threats in real losses? To answer this question, the experts decided to conduct a survey among representatives of key industries, to learn how the companies evaluate the threat and the status of their protection.

The survey was conducted in April-May 2014 among the leaders of 63 of the largest organizations in Russia. In the survey attended by representatives of the bank (42%), telecommunications (17%), energy (13%), transport (4%) sectors, as well as government agencies and services (12%).

More than 80% of the surveyed organizations are included in the Russian top 100 in terms of capitalization (RIA Rating, 2013). Approximately half of the companies have a very extensive network infrastructure and have more than 50 thousand. Nodes.

As it turned out, 58% of companies IB-incidents have led to significant problems: it is a violation of IT-infrastructure (31%), financial loss (15%) and reputational costs (12%). Critical incidents most was in the banking sector, in the media and transport companies. The most common incidents were DoS-attacks, which were exposed to 23% of the companies, as well as attacks on the external Web application (21%). Turned out to be quite high percentage of incidents of internal reasons - improper use of IP (16%) and abuse on the part of employees (14%). Thus, internal threats were more common than such a classic "horror stories" as malware infection (14%).

As a source of major threats to business leaders in the first place say cybercrime (31%). The second and third places - abuse administrators IP (23%) and employees (17%). Suppliers and partners are considering  a possible threat to 11% of respondents, it is a bit, given the trend of increased outsourcing. On information security threats by the security services identified 9% of respondents.

The main problems that hinder provide security at the proper level, called the lack of information security professionals (37%) and inadequate legal and regulatory framework (26%).

During the organization of security, most of the large companies are guided by binding on government regulations, however high, and the role of experts: 55% of executives surveyed rely on the opinion of their own security experts - is greater than the number of those who believe in the industry or international standards. The greatest "weight" has expertise in-house expertise in the telecommunications industry and media companies.

Many participants in the study also had  noted that security is important not only timely response to incidents within the company, but also the interaction with external groups to respond to incidents such as CERT (33%), and receive timely information about the vulnerabilities (42%). Most of those who have not yet established such cooperation, reported that the plan to do so in the future.

Source: securitylab.ru