Enterprises more prone to ransomware and malware: Netwrix
Netwrix, a cybersecurity vendor providing data security, has announced additional findings for the enterprise sector (organisations with over 1,000 employees) from its annual global 2023 Hybrid Security Trends Report.
According to the survey, 65% of organisations in the enterprise sector suffered a cyberattack within the last 12 months, similar to the results among companies of all sizes (68%). The most common security incidents are also the same: phishing, ransomware, and user account compromise.
However, larger organisations are a more frequent target for ransomware or other malware attacks: 48% of enterprises experienced this type of security incident on-premises, compared to 37% among organisations of all sizes. Malware attacks are less common in the cloud: just 21% of respondents in the enterprise sector experienced one within the last 12 months.
"It is no surprise that the enterprise sector suffers malware attacks at a higher rate than smaller organisations. After all, ransomware operators want to maximise their profits, so they consider which organisations are most able to pay a ransom to reduce business downtime, and the larger an organisation is, the costlier an operational disruption will be," says Dmitry Sotnikov, VP of product management at Netwrix. "On the other hand, larger organisations have more tools to spot the attack that might stay unnoticed for SMBs. In addition, enterprises have bigger infrastructure with more endpoints that statistically increases the chance of the security incident."
The enterprise sector also reports more considerable expenses due to cyberattacks than its smaller counterparts. Indeed, 28% of enterprises estimated their financial damage from cyber threats to be US$50,000 and higher, compared to just 16% among organisations.
"Smaller companies often underestimate their risk of attack, reasoning that cybercriminals tend to target enterprises because they store more intellectual property and other sensitive data. But our survey shows that organisations suffer cyberattacks with a similar frequency regardless of their size," says Dirk Schrader, VP of security research at Netwrix. "Every organisation has valuable data, such as customer and employee information, and is therefore a target for attackers. What's more, SMBs are not only a target on their own, but as a way into the larger enterprises that consume their services."
"With Netwrix's solutions, you can discover ransomware in your environment in time to take action. We follow an 'assume breach' strategy, which ensures that you can promptly detect ransomware that manages to get past your defences and contain the damage to avoid costly business disruptions and compliance penalties. In addition, Netwrix solutions can help you spot and thwart a ransomware attack to keep your organisation out of the news," adds Schrader.
"Since 2006, Netwrix solutions have been simplifying the lives of security professionals by enabling them to identify and protect sensitive data to reduce the risk of a breach, and to detect, respond to and recover from attacks, limiting their impact. More than 13,000 organisations worldwide rely on Netwrix solutions to strengthen their security and compliance posture across all three primary attack vectors: data, identity, and infrastructure."
