Netwrix, a leading cybersecurity vendor, has announced additional findings from its annual global Hybrid Security Trends Report for the enterprise sector. The survey revealed that 65% of organizations with more than 1,000 employees suffered a cyberattack within the last 12 months, a figure similar to the results among companies of all sizes. The most common incidents were phishing, ransomware, and user account compromise.
Interestingly, larger organizations were more likely to be targeted by ransomware or other malware attacks than their smaller counterparts. Almost half (48%) of enterprises experienced a security breach on premises, compared to just 37% among organizations of all sizes. By contrast, malware attacks were less common in the cloud, with only 21% of enterprise respondents reporting such incidents in the past year.
Dmitry Sotnikov, VP of Product Management at Netwrix, explained why larger organizations are more likely to be targeted by ransomware attacks. “Ransomware operators want to maximize their profits, so they consider which organizations are most able to pay a ransom to reduce business downtime – and the larger an organization is, the costlier an operational disruption will be,” he said.
Despite having more tools to detect and tackle security breaches, the enterprise sector reported greater expenses as a result of cyberattacks compared to their smaller counterparts. 28% of enterprises estimated their financial damage from cyber threats to be $50,000 or more, compared to just 16% among organizations overall.
Dirk Schrader, VP of Security Research at Netwrix, urged both SMBs and larger enterprises to take cybersecurity seriously, as cybercriminals target all organizations regardless of size. “Every organization has valuable data, such as customer and employee information, and is therefore a target for attackers. What’s more, SMBs are not only a target on their own but as a way into the larger enterprises that consume their services.”
Netwrix offers solutions to help organizations strengthen their security and compliance posture across all three primary attack vectors: data, identity, and infrastructure. To learn more about how enterprises can overcome the ransomware challenge, visit Netwrix’s ransomware protection page.