Top 5 undiscovered vulnerabilities found on enterprise networks
A report by Lumeta highlights the five most prevalent undiscovered or unknown vulnerabilities commonly found on enterprise networks.
1. Incorrect or incomplete deployments of IPS/IDS. 88 percent of enterprise networks display network segments that are not properly monitored or protected by an IPS/IDS.
2. Failure to discover and probe all segments of a network with vulnerability management tools. 76 percent of organizations using vulnerability management tools were inadvertently doing so on only a subset of their network segments.
3. Overlooking non-traditional IP-enabled devices. The third most common overlooked vulnerability was that posed by non-traditional IP-enabled devices, such as smart phones, building controls, ATMs, POS devices, and medical equipment. When devices are network connected, but are not managed or monitored by the tools IT uses to maintain the network, they can provide an “unsupervised” ingress or egress on the network.
4. Using default credentials on network devices. Though other reports have indicated exploits in this area are becoming less frequent, 50 percent of enterprises still have default credentials on network infrastructure equipment prior to using network discovery.
5. Unauthorized wireless access points (WAPs). The final overlooked security loop hole to make the report is the presence of unauthorized WAPs. Rogue WAPs which have been responsible for some of the largest data breaches in history, are still discovered on nearly 30 percent of enterprises in 2009.
“One need only look at the very real costs incurred by companies that have suffered major data breaches or operational downtime to understand what’s at risk,” said Lumeta COO Michael Markulec. “We’ve begun publishing these most commonly discovered vulnerabilities because, once detected, they’re all easily remedied. The reason these security gaps can be exploited isn’t because we don’t have the tools to fix them, it’s because they are often undiscovered or unknown.”