Malware attacks are happening more often and are harder
to detect, according to the State of the Endpoint Report from the Ponemon Institute. Of the 694 IT security administrators surveyed, the
number of respondents with a strategy in place to deal with malware fell from
43% in 2015 to 38% this year.
The report found that 68% had experienced distributed
denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, where multiple systems are used to target a
single system. In addition, 80% said that they believed their mobile
endpoints—defined as laptops, desktops, smartphones, printers, POS machines, or
ATMs—had been targets, up from 58% in 2015.
As troubling as that may sound, a bigger concern involves
employees. More than 80% of respondents said the biggest threat to endpoint
security was negligent or careless employees who don’t follow security
policies.
“You’ve
got how many different types of laptops? How many versions of Windows? How many
applications for those devices? How many phone types, etc.?” asked Michael
Davis, chief technology officer of the security start-up firm CounterTack in an
article for InformationWeek. “IT has to struggle with all of that variation, while also
trying to enforce a standard set of security protocols. And then, on top of
that, they have to deal with the end user, so it’s very difficult to enforce
anything, even from a purely technology perspective.”
