The devices that are exposing enterprises to risk
The enterprise device landscape is becoming much more complex and more dangerous, with the average device risk per industry increasing by 15 percent year-on-year.
A new report from Forescout highlights that network-connected devices, from traditional IT operating systems to specialized healthcare systems and OT machinery, are exposing organizations to damaging threats such as ransomware attacks and data exfiltration.
The industries facing the greatest risks are retail companies followed by financial services, government, healthcare, and manufacturing.
The report shows that 50 percent of devices with the most critical vulnerabilities are routers. VoIP systems, IP cameras and UPS devices also appear on the risky list.
Special purpose operating systems including embedded firmware also represent a significant challenge for security teams. Tracking and managing these systems is a major visibility issue for organizations. Special purpose OSes are prevalent in healthcare (16 percent), government (14 percent) and manufacturing (12 percent), but now outnumber mobile OSes across all industries.
To help businesses combat the issue Forescout is launching eyeScope, a cloud visibility and monitoring solution that provides network, security and incident response teams with a consolidated, up-to-date view of their device landscape with classification, connection, and compliance context.
"Being able to protect an enterprise from cyberattacks starts with understanding what devices and exposure you have in your network. Our research shows that many mid-sized and large enterprises still have blind spots and rely on a mix of third-party solutions that don’t give a complete, consolidated asset inventory," says Barry Mainz, CEO of Forescout. "Forescout eyeScope is the first step an enterprise needs to take so that they can gain comprehensive visibility into all of their devices and take the necessary steps to prevent unauthorized applications, or peripheral devices are negatively impacting their security posture."
The full report is available from the Forescout site.
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