eBook - Best Practices for Vulnerability & Patch Management

As cybercrime explodes so does the need for best practices to help protect your company from hackers

The threat is real—these statistics illustrate the severity and reality of cyber attacks.

• Every 39 seconds there is an attack (Security Magazine, 2017)
• Hackers create 300,000 new pieces of malware daily (Source: McAfee)
• 66% of businesses attacked by hackers aren’t confident they can recover (Source: Fortune)
• 43% of cyberattacks target small business and 60% of small companies go out of business within six months of a cyberattack (Small Business Trends, 2019)

These statistics aren’t surprising in light of edgescan’s 2019 Vulnerability Statistics Report: the most common infrastructure vulnerabilities in 2018 included systems with exposed Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) not being patched regularly; and according to 2018 threat intel, DoneRDP (Remote Desktop) vulnerabilities were also relatively common and a popular target for attackers (p. 2). Cross-Site Scripting, both reflected and stored, was the most common vulnerability in 2018 at 14.69%.

These are only a few of the many vulnerabilities highlighted in edgescan’s report—which underscores and highlights the urgent need for establishing vulnerability and patch management best practices, as well as guidelines for meeting compliance regulations. This is essential when you consider that 73% of black hat hackers (those with criminal intent) said traditional firewall and antivirus security are irrelevant or obsolete (Hosting Tribunal, n.d.).