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The investigation found that, out of nearly 85,000 instances of the 100 most common vulnerabilities identified in corporate networks, approximately seven percent of them have high severity ratings according to standards used by the National Vulnerability Database.* Nearly half of these highly severe weaknesses were exploitable, and could be used by attackers to gain control over compromised machines via remote code execution. And nearly all of these exploitable weaknesses are easy to fix with the right software patches or simple administrative changes.

“It’s bad news for a company if an attacker finds one of these highly severe vulnerabilities,” said Jarno Niemelä, Lead Researcher, F-Secure Labs. “The fact that we found thousands of issues this severe suggests some serious security shortfalls amongst companies. Either they’re not implementing patch management programs, or they’re forgetting to include parts of their network in their maintenance practices. But no matter what the underlying cause is, it’s lots of opportunities for attackers, and lots of breaches waiting to happen.”

This finding reinforces previous warnings regarding the importance of implementing simple security measures. According to the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, following a few easy steps such as patching vulnerable software can prevent up to 85 percent of targeted cyber attacks.**

Every Vulnerability is like a “Kick me” Sign

While the investigation found thousands of highly severe weak points, the findings pointed to misconfigured systems as being far more common. The 10 most frequent vulnerabilities found were low or medium severity issues, but accounted for 62 percent of all weaknesses discovered in the investigation. While these issues lack the severity of high-risk vulnerabilities, they encourage hackers to investigate further and look for additional weak spots.

“These issues aren’t particularly pressing if you think about them intrinsically, but hackers see non-critical issues as the cyber security equivalent of a ‘kick me’ sign,” said Andy Patel, Senior Manager, F-Secure Technology Outreach. “There’s lots of ways to stumble across these vulnerabilities just by casually browsing the web. Even hackers uninterested in doing anything bad could be tempted to pull at the thread and see what unravels. Companies that are lucky could get a helpful email informing them of the problem, but the unlucky ones are going to have professional criminals conducting reconnaissance in preparation for targeted attacks.”

Visibility of Networks and Vulnerabilities Key Preventative Measure

F-Secure’s vulnerability scanning solution, F-Secure Radar, is a certified PCI ASV solution that gives companies a complete overview of their networks, and highlights weaknesses that attackers can use to compromise systems. It includes different scanning options to provide a comprehensive analysis of networks, and ranks vulnerabilities according to their severity. Companies can use the scans to map the different systems integrated with the network, check web applications (even custom-built APIs tailored to fit unique networks and infrastructure), and locate outdated, unpatched, or misconfigured parts of their network.

According to Rune Kristensen, Director, Radar Services, F-Secure, offering Radar to companies allows them to implement security measures that are integral to a holistic cyber security strategy. “Visibility is an important preventative measure, and we’re planning to enhance Radar’s capabilities to give companies even better visibility in the future. For example, many companies outsource certain services to third parties without taking security precautions, or even informing their IT personnel. We’re developing ways to include scanning third-party services integrated into corporate networks, which can provide much needed visibility into how weaknesses in a company’s data supply chain could expose them to attacks.”

Radar can be purchased as a license product and administered directly by companies, or as a service provided by F-Secure or selected reseller partners. Using Radar as a service not only provides scans conducted at agreed upon intervals, but it also provides additional support through reporting and expert guidance on patching and hardening vulnerabilities. Radar is suitable primarily for mid to large-sized companies, and available now.

*Source: https://nvd.nist.gov/cvss.cfm
**Source: https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA15-119A?hootPostID=b6821137ae5173095390bd502ae04892