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SPECIAL REPORT

The economics behind cyber attacks

DUBAI, February 2, 2016

A new analysis provides insight into topics like the average earnings of a cyber attacker, the amount of time attacks typically take, and how to prevent successful data breaches by increasing the cost of conducting them.

Adversaries share their own insights on when attacks become unprofitable in the new research report “Flipping the Economics of Attacks” by the Ponemon Institute, sponsored by global security company Palo Alto Networks.

Key findings

•    Cyber attackers are opportunistic and aim for the easiest targets first.

•    72 percent of survey respondents said they won’t waste time on an attack that will not quickly yield high-value information.

•    A majority of the survey’s respondents (73 percent) stated attackers hunt for easy, “cheap” targets.

•    Time is the enemy of cyber attackers.

•    An increase of approximately 2 days (40 hours) in the time required to conduct successful cyber attacks can eliminate as much as 60 percent of all attacks.

•    On average, a technically proficient attacker will quit an attack and move on to another target after spending approximately a week (209 hours) without success.

•    The “big payday” is a myth.

•    The average adversary earns less than $30,000 annually from their malicious activities, which is 1/4 of a cyber security professional’s average yearly wage.

•    A strong security posture increases the time to execute an attack.

•    It takes double the amount of time (147 hours) for a technically proficient cyber attacker to plan and execute an attack against an organization with an “excellent” IT security infrastructure versus 70 hours for “typical” security.

•    72 percent of respondents believe attackers will stop their efforts when an organization presents a strong defence.

“As computing costs have declined, so too have the costs for cyber adversaries to infiltrate an organization, contributing to the growing volume of threats and data breaches,” said Davis Hake, director of cyber security strategy at Palo Alto Networks.

“Understanding the costs, motivations, payouts, and finding ways to flip the cost scenario will be instrumental in reducing the number of breaches we read about almost daily and restoring trust in our digital age.”

“The survey illustrates the importance of threat prevention. By adopting next-generation security technologies and a breach prevention philosophy, organizations can lower the return on investment an adversary can expect from a cyber attack by such a degree that they abandon the attack before it’s completed,” said Dr Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder, Ponemon Institute. – TradeArabia News Service




Tags: | cyber attacks | palo alto networks |

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