Ponemon State Of Endpoint Security Report – The Findings

Ponemon recently released their annual State of Endpoint Security Risk Report earlier this month, bringing together insights and data from over 660 IT security professionals globally. In this blog post, we identify the key takeaways and learnings from the report.

COMPROMISED ENDPOINTS ARE INCREASING

64% of respondent organisations have had one or more of their endpoints successfully compromised in the last year, a 17% increase from the previous year. Compromised endpoints can result in numerous consequences including;

• End-user productivity loss,
• System downtime,
• Damage to IT infrastructure,
• Reputation/brand damage,
• Lawsuits, fines, regulatory actions,
• And most alarmingly, theft of information assets.
  

All costly to organisations of every size, with the average cost incurred increasing from $5 million to $7.12 million when comparing to 2017.

LEGACY SIGNATURE-BASED AV SOLUTIONS AREN’T GOOD ENOUGH

Worryingly, only 29% believe that their legacy signature-based AV solutions remain capable of blocking known and unknown threats. With the rise of fileless attacks, such as; macros, scripting engines, and in-memory techniques, cybercriminals are exploiting the flaws within legacy AV solutions and their controls.

Additionally, zero-day attacks are becoming more prevalent, with the frequency increasing from 25% in Ponemon’s 2017 to 37% in 2018. Both these statistics are of concern, as zero-day and fileless attacks are twice as likely to lead to compromised endpoints.

This has resulted in plummeting confidence in legacy AV solution capabilities, with traditional AV solutions missing up to 57% of attacks on average. 76% respondents also reported that of the compromised endpoints they experienced, new or unknown zero-day attacks were to blame. Most concerning in the analysis, over half of the respondents reported that they were using traditional AV solutions and patch management to try to protect their organisations. Even though these new or unknown zero-day attacks appeared to be the most prevalent technique to compromise endpoints.

A NEXT-GEN APPROACH NEEDS TO BE ADOPTED

The need for proactive protection is driving the shift to Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions, as a means to help detect the early warning signs of an attack.

Whilst signature-based AV platforms are still needed to prevent file-based attacks, organisations need to adapt their endpoint security strategy to maintain protection. EDR solutions provide an added layer of security to your endpoints, detecting and preventing the spread of an attack and proactively blocking attacks. Real-time monitoring capabilities that span across detection, response and forensics give your organisation comprehensive visibility into what is happening on your endpoints that traditional AV solutions are unable to provide.

IMPLEMENTING AN EDR SOLUTION IS NOT ENOUGH

Organisations deploying EDR solutions are only using 46% of all available features and capabilities on average. Infotrust, in strategic partnership with CrowdStrike, is uniquely positioned to help clients combat the complex deployment challenges presented by many legacy AV platforms with CrowdStrike’s purpose built and 100% native cloud-based Falcon Endpoint Security Platform, delivering immediate time to value.

The power of the CrowdStrike Falcon Platform, coupled with Infotrust’s award-winning service engagement model, ‘The Infotrust Way’, ensures our customers are harnessing the greatest possible return on their investment in endpoint security technology.