Almost 70 percent of IT professionals suffer weekly phishing attacks

phishing

A new survey sponsored by HP's TippingPoint network security arm looks at the main information security concerns of modern enterprises.

It reveals that 69 percent of IT professionals have to deal with phishing attacks at least once a week, with customer and financial data the main targets. The survey also finds that seven out of 10 attacks originating from inside the network come from a malware infected machine.

"Organizations are increasingly challenged to protect their networks from advanced targeted attacks, in fact, it is likely that most environments have already been breached with systems infected by malware," says Frank Mong, vice president, Solutions, Enterprise Security Products at HP. "It's important that IT professionals understand how attackers are trying to break through the network, and have confidence in their ability to mitigate attacks when every second matters".

The survey of more than 200 US IT professionals also reveals that 60 percent of attacks come from malicious communication with the command and control server and more than half exploit software vulnerabilities.

Other key findings include that the most common country of origin for external attacks is China followed by Russia and the US. There are major concerns surrounding how employees use data too. Some 85 percent of survey respondents had concerns about illicit file sharing and use of non-work-related applications, while 63 percent are worried about employees visiting inappropriate websites on work systems. Some seven out of 10 were also concerned about abuse from the use of social media on corporate networks.

When asked about the type of data at risk, 67 percent of respondents listed customer data as the most likely to be attacked, followed by financial information (63 percent). Other data likely to be targeted in a network breach includes corporate intellectual property (59 percent) and employee data (49 percent).

You can read more about the report's findings on the HP blog.

Photo Credit:  Ivelin Radkov/Shutterstock

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