Only 2% of all exposures allow attackers seamless access to critical assets, while 75% of exposures along attack paths lead to “dead ends”.
The findings are from a recent report by XM Cyber that analyzed over 60 million exposures across over 10 million entities on-premises and in the cloud.
Created in partnership with the Cyentia Institute, the new study also suggests that 71% of organizations have exposure to on-premises networks, putting critical assets in the cloud at risk. Once there, 92% of your critical assets will be vulnerable.
Learn more about cloud security here: A 2023 Guide to Secure Cloud Deployments to Improve Application Security
“Once attackers break into your cloud environment, they can easily compromise your assets. Cloud security is still immature and many security teams do not fully understand what security issues they should be looking for. No,” explains Zur Ulianitzky, vice president of research at XM Cyber.
Additionally, the report found that the average organization experiences 11,000 exploitable security exposures each month, with techniques targeting credentials and permissions affecting 82% of organizations, and all identified exploits account for over 70% of security exposure in
Ulianitzky added, “The challenge also surfaced is how identities and permissions in the cloud are (wrongly) managed.” “Going forward, organizations will have to rethink their approach to security to ensure that all identities, systems, and the interdependencies between them are protected holistically.”
Having said that, XM Cyber’s report also shows that most security alerts are harmless and do not lead to critical assets.
Tanium Security Director, Endpoint Security said: The study, Melissa Bischoping, comments on the findings.
“By reducing the amount of systems a user has access to, we reduce the risk of those credentials being misused in the later stages of an attack, and stacking multi-factor authentication and device health certificates further enhances the effectiveness of this practice. will rise.”
The XM Cyber report comes weeks after a Microsoft paper suggested that only 1% of all cloud permissions are in active use.
