Smarter, sophisticated and more resilient malware emerged in 2013 and the majority of organisations downloaded at least one infected file with unknown malware in the period between June and December 2013.
This is according to Check Point Software Technologies' 2014 Security Report, which reveals that overall malware activity grew dramatically year-over-year.
Check Point found malicious software within 84% of the organisations under analysis; this malware was downloaded at an average rate of one every 10 minutes. In fact, the report notes, 14% of organisations experienced a user downloading malware every two hours or less in 2012. In 2013, that number increased more than tripled to 58% of organisations.
The study also discovered that bot infections continued in prevalence, with a host infected by a bot every 24 hours.
In 2013, at least one bot was detected in 73% of our surveyed organisations, an increase from 63% in 2012. Organisations also struggled with containing bots. Check Point found that 77% of bots were active for more than four weeks. Bots also communicated with their Command and Control every three minutes.
Use of high-risk applications continued to be on the rise in 2013, with torrents, anonymisers and peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing applications being used every nine minutes on an average day, says Check Point.
P2P file sharing usage increased from 61% of organisations in 2012 to 75% in 2013, it notes, adding that 56% of organisations ran anonymiser proxy applications in 2013, up from 43% in 2012.
According to the report, data loss was top-of-mind in 2013, with recent breaches and mass theft targeting consumer data at well-known brands like Target, Neiman Marcus and Michaels.
The research also found that 88% of the organisations analysed experienced at least one potential data loss event, growing from the 54% observed in 2012. In fact, in 33% of the financial institutions surveyed by Check Point, credit card information was sent outside of the organisations, while 25% of healthcare and insurance institutions researched sent HIPAA-protected information outside of their walls.
"Our 2014 Security Report provides a bird's eye view into the degree of infiltration and sophistication of new threats," says Amnon Bar-Lev, president of Check Point Software Technologies.
"We found that organisations are often surprised by the severity of bot infections and the various threats that lurk on their networks. It is clear that customers need an architectural approach to deal with these issues."
Check Point urges that in a world of ever-changing cyber threats, organisations must understand the nature of the latest exploits, and how their networks are potentially impacted. Enterprises need to arm themselves with both cyber threat awareness and the appropriate security architecture to address these evolving challenges, it concludes.
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