A new report reveals that the Fortune 1000 companies suffer twice the amount of data breaches their peers.
According to the BitSight’s latest report titled “How Secure Are America’s Largest Business Partners? and Rating Cybersecurity Performance of Fortune 1000,” companies which are part of this list are very likely to suffer a data breach. The report also shows that companies with a Security Rating 900 are top and are the safest, while the companies with Security Rating of 500 or lower have five times more chance to experience a publicly disclosed breach compared to companies with a Security Rating of 700 of even higher.
“Understanding security maturity of the Fortune 1000 companies provided greater context for any organisation looking to benchmark their own performance,” said Stephen Boyer, the co-founder and CTO of BitSight. “Moreover, the data can be used to improve inform companies of the risks posed when they are sharing data or network access with the Fortune 1000 organisations. For an example, a primary reason for a Fortune 1000 company to have a lower median Security Rating is because of a higher frequency of system compromise on their networks. Awareness about the incident detection and response practices should factor into the process of screening the new vendors.”
The BitSight researchers have found that at least one out of every 20 Fortune 1000 companies has experienced a publicly disclosed breach, they found this observing over the past 15 months. Of course, the size of the issue depends on the size of the company. It should also be added that the companies that deal over the Internet a lot have a higher risk of being targeted by hackers, and therefore, to suffer a data breach.
There is also the greater problem that a majority of Fortune 1000 companies are found to have at least one remote administration service running on an open port, which may allow unauthorized access to machines.