Federal Government Information Technology

Ransomware, insider threats top SANS annual security survey

Federal Times: SANS Institute released its 2017 Data Protection Survey, “Sensitive Data at Risk,” which highlights the ongoing challenge of using centralized security to protect the decentralized data that is prevalent and growing across today’s enterprise IT environments.

The report revealed that 78 percent of responding organizations encountered two or more threats over the past year, 68 percent experienced multiple occurrences of the same threat and 12 percent suffered a breach. Among the 12 percent of victims, 48 percent reported that threat actors exfiltrated data via encrypted channels.

Security professionals in government (14 percent) comprised the second-largest industry represented in the findings. Respondents in banking and finance (16.3 percent) topped the list, while technology (12 percent) and cybersecurity (8.9 percent) rounded out the top four.

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