Attackers primarily target on-premises IT infrastructures

Netwrix, a cybersecurity vendor that makes data security easy, announced additional findings for the enterprise sector (organizations with more than 1,000 employees) from its annual global 2023 Hybrid Security Trends Report.

According to the survey, 65% of organizations in the enterprise sector suffered a cyberattack within the last 12 months, which is similar to the results among companies of all sizes (68%). The most common security incidents are also the same: phishing, ransomware and user account compromise.

However, larger organizations are a more frequent target for ransomware or other malware attacks: 48% of enterprises experienced this type of security incident on premises, compared to 37% among organizations of all sizes. Malware attacks are less common in the cloud: just 21% of respondents in the enterprise sector experienced one within the last 12 months.

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“It is no surprise that the enterprise sector suffers malware attacks at a higher rate than smaller organizations. After all, 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,” says Dmitry Sotnikov, VP of Product Management at Netwrix. “On the other hand, larger organizations have more tools to spot the attack that might stay unnoticed for SMBs. In addition, enterprises have bigger infrastructure with more endpoints that statistically increases the chance of the security incident.”

The enterprise sector also reports larger expenses as a result of cyberattacks than their smaller counterparts. Indeed, 28% of enterprises estimated their financial damage from cyberthreats to be $50,000 and higher, compared to just 16% among organizations overall.

“Smaller companies often underestimate their risk of attack, reasoning that cybercriminals tend to target enterprises because they store more intellectual property (IP) and other sensitive data. But our survey shows that organizations suffer cyberattacks with a similar frequency regardless of their size,” says Dirk Schrader, VP of Security Research at Netwrix. “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.”

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