Economic instability and cyber-threats – the two main threats to business
Cyber-threats were number two on the list of key problems faced by business, second only to worries caused by economic instability, according to a survey conducted in July 2012 by B2B International in cooperation with Kaspersky Lab. As part of the survey, 3,300 company representatives from 22 countries across the globe expressed their opinions on IT security issues. All the respondents are actively involved in making important business decisions, including those related to IT security.
In the future, the significance of cybercrime-related problems is set to grow – this is the belief of 42% of those surveyed. According to business representatives, in the next two years cyber-threats will pose the greatest danger for companies, surpassing even the fear of economic problems. Statistics collected by Kaspersky Lab indicate constantly growing cybercriminal activity, confirming that the apprehensions are not unfounded.
While in 2011 Kaspersky Lab detected an average of 70,000 new malicious programmes daily, this year the figure has grown to 125,000. The amount of mobile malware, specifically targeting the Android mobile operating system, is growing even faster – the number of malicious objects grew by a factor of 200 during 2011! This is particularly important since mobile devices are increasingly being used to access confidential information on the corporate infrastructure and therefore require special controls and protection.
Targeted attacks on corporate infrastructure aimed at stealing critical information pose another serious problem to businesses. Such attacks can involve spam mailings, zero-day vulnerabilities, malicious scripts and other techniques. That’s why to repel such attacks companies need to deploy fully functional security suites and secure all the elements of their IT infrastructure – employee workstations, file and mail servers and mobile devices.
It is not enough for today’s corporate security solutions to block malware as effectively as possible – knowledge of legitimate software is also essential. This approach is implemented in Kaspersky Lab’s corporate solution for protecting workstations. A database of ‘white’ applications containing over half a billion records makes effective business protection scenarios possible, such as the Default Deny method, which blocks all software with the exception of explicitly allowed legitimate applications.
The full version of the report on the survey conducted by B2B International in July 2012 can be downloaded from: http://www.kaspersky.com/downloads/pdf/kaspersky_global_it-security-risks-survey_report_eng_final.pdf.
Up-to-date information about the features and advantages of Kaspersky Lab’s corporate solutions is available on the company’s web portal at: http://www.kaspersky.com/beready.