Privileged Account Takeovers Pose Major Risks

The biggest enterprise security risk is cyber-attacks that take over privileged and administrative accounts, according to a survey of 673 IT security and C-level executives. The Global Advanced Threat Landscape Survey, released by CyberArk, reveals that IT executives believe the top reasons for data breaches are poor employee security habits and attacker sophistication. The survey also points to challenges around organizations' false confidence or over-confidence in their ability to protect against and mitigate these attacks. More than half stated they could detect an attack within days. Also at issue is how enterprises protect themselves from these attacks. Despite increasing awareness about exploited privileged accounts being used as primary attack vectors, many organizations still focus on perimeter defenses, according to CyberArk. They should focus on more devastating compromises inside the network, such as Pass-the-Hash and Kerberos Golden Ticket attacks, the security company said. Here are 10 key survey takeaways that enterprises can work on with their channel partners to improve their security practices and capabilities.