Security pros lose sleep over protecting critical assets

A new poll of 250 information technology, IT security, legal and risk/fraud/compliance professionals reveals that 83 percent say they have experienced a successful cyber attack in the past two years, with half saying the attackers managed to reach their critical IT assets.

No surprise then that 86 percent admit to having been kept awake at night by concerns about the protection of critical systems.

The study for Telos Corporation with research conducted by Vanson Bourne finds 99 percent believe they need to improve their ability to prevent an attacker from accessing critical assets once they have broken into the network.

While 95 percent of those who have segmented and protected their critical IT assets believe that the assets are better protected as a result, 93 percent believe the tools they are currently using to protect their segmented assets are insufficient to defend their organization against cyber threats.

"As hackers and threats continue to grow in sophistication, the importance of locking down critical IT assets is clearer than ever before, yet current security approaches are falling short in achieving that goal," says Tom Badders, senior product manager at Telos. "Now is the time for organizations to consider a different approach -- and the best way to protect critical assets is to hide them entirely."

Almost all (99 percent) of respondents who have been kept awake at night by concerns about the protection of critical IT assets agree that they would sleep better if they could hide their network assets by eliminating IP addresses, making them invisible on the public internet via network obfuscation. 36 percent of organizations are very concerned that they will experience an attack on critical IT assets in the next six months, however, among those using network obfuscation tools, this drops to 24 percent.

You can get the full report from the Telos site.

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