[ISN] Security Managers Report Weak Threat Defenses

http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/intrusion-prevention/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225701797

By Mathew J. Schwartz
InformationWeek
June 29, 2010

According to a new survey conducted by Ponemon Institute and sponsored 
by NetWitness, 83% of information security professionals said their 
organization has been recently targeted by advanced threats, and 71% 
report that such attacks have increased in the past 12 months.

But even as these advanced attacks increase, many organizations don't 
always know when they're being attacked. Indeed, 41% of the 591 surveyed 
IT security managers in the United States said that they were unable to 
determine how frequently they were targeted by advanced threats.

For the survey, these advanced threats were defined by Ponemon as being 
"a methodology employed to evade an organization's present technical and 
process countermeasures, which relies on a variety of attack techniques, 
as opposed to one specific type."

While zero-day attacks are the most prevalent form of advanced threat, 
according to Ponemon, "there are increasingly many instances where known 
attacks are being re-engineered and repackaged to extend their 
usefulness."

[...]


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