Dive Brief:
- U.S. companies are facing an enormous challenge in managing enterprise security, as almost half of all endpoint devices — including computers and other mobile devices — cannot be detected by IT departments or they are running on outdated operating system software, according to a study from Adaptiva and the Ponemon Institute released Wednesday.
- The average U.S. enterprise is running about 135,000 endpoint devices, half of which IT departments cannot observe , leaving security operations staff unable to detect threats or even confirm who is using a particular device. The research is based on a survey of more than 600 IT operations and security professionals.
- More than half of organizations said they have had five or more attacks on average over the past year across their endpoints.. The average cost was $1.8 million per year, or about $360,000 per attack.
Dive Insight:
The growth of remote work since early 2020 created a massive distribution point sprawl within organizations. It left IT security officials with enormous challenges in managing security in an environment where workers logged on from remote locations, using devices and networks that could not be detected or controlled by a central authority.
“Managing devices at the edge pre-2020 was already a challenge for most enterprise IT organizations, but one could argue they got by,” Deepak Kumar, founder and CEO of Adaptiva said, via email. “Now, halfway through 2022, it seems they aren’t getting by anymore.”
Part of the struggle comes from ensuring systems are updated to the latest operating systems and applications are fully patched to detect the most recent vulnerabilities.
The study echoes prior research showing companies were having difficulties managing their perimeter environments as workers were no longer confined to an office and working on network systems.
A 2021 report by Trend Micro showed companies were dealing with too many different security monitoring tools in remote work environments. Unpatched vulnerabilities like Log4j and Microsoft’s MSDT vulnerability, known as Follina, have harmed companies slow to fully apply patches to their environments.
