Data storage, remote access and network administration most prevalent services exposing sensitive data; findings validate correlation between unsafe network services and prevalence of wider security issues in the digital supply chain
RiskRecon, a Mastercard Company, and the Cyentia Institute published “Third-Party Security Signals: Exposing the reality of unsafe network services,” an in-depth study that examines the prevalence of unsafe network services exposed to the internet. The research found that 33% of companies within the digital supply chain expose common network services such as data storage, remote access and network administration to the internet. In addition, organizations that expose unsafe services to the internet also exhibit more critical security findings.
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33% of companies expose unsafe network services to the internet, according to new research by @riskrecon and @cyentiainst
The research is based on RiskRecon’s assessment of millions of internet-facing systems across approximately 40,000 commercial and public institutions. Cyentia and RiskRecon analyzed the data in two strategic ways: the direct proportion of internet-facing hosts running unsafe services, as well as the percentage of companies that expose unsafe services somewhere across their infrastructure. The research concludes that the impact is further heightened when vendors and business partners run unsafe, exposed services used by their digital supply chain customers.
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“Blocking internet access to unsafe network services is one of the most basic security hygiene practices. The fact that one-third of companies in the digital supply chain are failing at one of the most basic cybersecurity practices should serve as a wake up call to executives and third-party risk management teams,” said Kelly White, CEO and co-founder, RiskRecon. “We have a long way to go in hardening the infrastructure that we all depend on to safely operate our businesses and protect consumer data. Risk managers will be well served to leverage objective data to better understand and act on their third-party risk.”
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