Old Vulnerabilities Are Kept Alive Through Bad Configuration

Feb 24, 2015

HP's annual Cyber Risk report offers a bleak look at the state of IT.

HP released its annual Cyber Risk report, which summarizes and attempts to quantify some of the major security problems facing IT departments today.
One of the more interesting findings is that "Well Known attacks are still commonplace." In other words, despite the attention admins, intruders, and spies pay to new zero-day attacks, many of the vulnerabilities exploited in 2014 have been around for years – or even decades. Misconfigured servers and poorly coded middleware layers keep old vulnerabilities alive even when remedies might be known.  
The report also points out that new technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and point of sale credit systems have led to new avenues of attack. To compound the problems, intruders are more numerous and more sophisticated than ever, and traditional protections such as anti-malware scanners are less reliable with the new generation of attacks. According to the report, anti-malware software catches only about half of all cyberattacks.
An executive summary of the 2015 Cyber Risk report is available for download. You'll need to register with an email address and some basic information.

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