Incident Response Survey: Organizations Ill-Prepared for Advanced Threats

Princeton, NJ, May 22, 2013 --(PR.com)-- Under the shadow of advanced cyber threats, only 20% of organizations rate their incident response programs as "very effective." Their biggest gaps: Being able to detect and contain malware, which can also be the precursor to advanced persistent threats.

These are among the main takeaways from the Information Security Media Group 2013 Incident Response Survey, the new study commissioned by FireEye. Aimed at determining how organizations are prepared to respond to today's new breed of cyber-attacks, the global survey also finds:

-47 percent of respondents are aware that their organizations were infected by malicious code (virus or worm) in the past year, while 37 percent had lost or stolen devices, and 31 percent were victims of spear phishing;
-These incidents resulted in system downtime (47 percent of respondents), lost or compromised data (24 percent) or financial loss (17 percent);
-Only 26 percent of respondents rate their current anti-malware tools as "very effective."

"The threat landscape has changed dramatically as cyber threats have outpaced traditional security defenses, such as anti-virus, and permeated around the world, enabling cyber thieves to easily evade detection and establish connections inside the perimeter of major organizations," says Bill Hau, VP, FireEye Labs. "This research puts in proper perspective the impact of cyber crime and espionage."

This online survey was conducted by ISMG in the spring of 2013. Specific goals of the study were to determine the top security threats for global organizations in 2013; gaps in how organizations detect and respond to these threats; and how these gaps will be closed.

Nearly 300 survey respondents include senior security and IT leaders from organizations of all sizes, primarily the U.S. and its banking, healthcare and technology sectors.

The executive summary of the survey results is being unveiled by FireEye at the Computer and Enterprise Investigations Conference (CEIC) in Orlando, Fla., May 19-22. FireEye is the Premier Sponsor of this large, global event, and will be presenting in the sessions and show floor theater, as well as exhibiting on the main floor in Booth 700. FireEye is also sponsoring the Incident Response Virtual Summit taking place on BrightTALK™, June 5-7.

Final survey results are being tallied now for a survey report and results webinar, which will be available in June. The report and webinar will analyze responses to key questions, including:

-How are organizations prepared to respond to advanced persistent threats?
-What are the technical challenges that impact the ability for effective incident response?
-How can organizations evolve their incident response plans to address the new threat landscape?

For more information about the 2013 Incident Response Survey, please contact Tom Field, VP Editorial, ISMG, at tfield@ismgcorp.com.

About the Sponsor:

FireEye® has pioneered the next generation of threat protection to help organizations protect themselves from being compromised. Cyber attacks have become much more sophisticated and are now easily bypassing traditional signature-based defenses, such as next-generation firewalls, IPS, anti-virus, and gateways, compromising the majority of enterprise networks. The FireEye platform supplements these legacy defenses with a new model of security to protect against the new breed of cyber attacks. The unique FireEye platform provides the industry's only cross-enterprise threat protection fabric to dynamically identify and block cyber attacks in real time. The core of the FireEye platform is a signature-less, virtualized detection engine and a cloud-based threat intelligence network, which help organizations protect their assets across all major threat vectors, including Web, email, mobile, and file-based cyber attacks. The FireEye platform is deployed in over 40 countries and more than 1,000 customers and partners, including over 25 percent of the Fortune 100.

About ISMG:

Information Security Media Group publishes BankInfoSecurity, CUInfoSecurity, GovInfoSecurity, HealthcareInfoSecurity, InfoRiskToday, DataBreachToday and CareersInfoSecurity. These digital media sites offer news, views, research and education on the top industry, security, regulatory and technology challenges facing information security leaders worldwide. Each site is guided by an advisory board of renowned thought-leaders from business, government and education.

ISMG's suite of educational webinars offers hands-on training by knowledgeable practitioners and is available to individual and corporate subscribers.

ISMG's custom research, including the Healthcare Information Security Today, Faces of Fraud and Cloud Computing Security surveys, is routinely featured at leading industry events, such as RSA Conference and BAI Payments Connect.