Report on cyber risks: How vulnerable companies are

The new Attack Surface Threat Report 2024 identifies the greatest cyber risks posed by increasing attack surfaces as well as the most important security measures for companies. The experts from Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 team share the most important findings.

For its 2024 Attack Surface Threat Report, Unit 42 and Cortex Xpanse 2023 collected petabytes of information on security risks accessible via the Internet from 265 organizations. Throughout the year, the research team examined changes in cloud services and the risks associated with them.

The key findings of the report

Changed attack surfaces lead to vulnerabilities:

• In all industries, attack surfaces are constantly changing.
• On average, over 300 new services are added to a company's attack surface every month.
• These new additions account for nearly 32 percent of new high or critical cloud risks.

Numerous opportunities for lateral movement in the network and data exfiltration

• 73 percent of high-risk vulnerabilities affect just three areas: IT and network infrastructure, business applications, and remote access services. This creates numerous opportunities for lateral movement in the network and data exfiltration.

Critical IT and security services are exposed to the Internet

• More than 23 percent of vulnerabilities affect critical IT and security infrastructures, opening the door to opportunistic attacks.
• These include vulnerabilities in application protocols such as SNMP, NetBIOS, PPTP, and Internet-accessible administrative login pages of routers, firewalls, VPNs, and other core network and security applications.

A look at individual sectors

• With over 7,000 services, the media and entertainment sector adds the most new services every month.
• The telecommunications, insurance, pharmaceutical and life sciences sectors also saw a significant increase in their attack surfaces, with over 1,000 services.
• In critical infrastructures such as financial services, healthcare and manufacturing, over 200 new services were added every month.

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About Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks, the global leader in cybersecurity solutions, is shaping the cloud-based future with technologies that transform the way people and businesses work. Our mission is to be the cybersecurity partner of choice and protect our digital lives. We help you tackle the world's toughest security challenges with continuous innovation, leveraging the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, analytics, automation and orchestration. By delivering an integrated platform and building a growing ecosystem of partners, we're leading the way in protecting tens of thousands of organizations across clouds, networks and mobile devices. Our vision is a world where every day is safer than the one before.

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