Over a quarter of businesses have critical vulnerabilities that could be exploited

Over a quarter of businesses (28 percent) have critical vulnerabilities that could easily be exploited by cyberattack.

But even when these vulnerabilities are flagged by penetration testing, they are still being left unaddressed.

New research from cybersecurity firm Bulletproof, based on data from over 3,800 days' worth of penetration testing from its Defense.com platform, finds 37 percent of businesses have outdated and vulnerable components, 11 percent broken access controls, and seven percent SQL injection issues.

At the moment many vulnerabilities that are not addressed within the first year never get remediated, but the introduction of more stringent regulation means businesses will need to begin to address these historic vulnerabilities if they are to avoid sanction and remain secure.

Oliver Pinson-Roxburgh, CEO at Bulletproof, says:

Our research found that even when alerted to critical vulnerabilities which could be exploited by attackers, a quarter of businesses chose to leave them and hope for the best. In reality this proportion is likely to be much higher, considering that our research was only from companies who actually had a retest. This complacency has contributed to the huge growth industry that is cybercrime today.

Most businesses we work with do tackle the highest priority threats, but they are faced with limited time and resources. The problem we see is that almost every business is expanding its digital capabilities now, and this has led to an explosion of critical vulnerabilities as the attack surface grows. Most security teams I speak to are struggling to keep on top of even high-priority patches.

The solution is a defense in depth approach, layering multiple cyber resilience tools and tactics to thwart potential attackers and protect critical business functions. With the looming threat of new regulation for non-compliant MSPs on the horizon, it will be interesting to see how far security teams can go in addressing these vulnerabilities over the next 12 months.

You can get the full report from the Bulletproof site.

Image Credit: Jurgen Priewe / Shutterstock