Firms open to attack from security holes
Friday, June 20, 2008
A number of recent reports have identified that many firms are leaving themselves open to preventable attacks because of poor IT security policies.
Industry resource reports that a trio of recent studies demonstrate how lax security practices throughout organizations are making them a target for hackers.
One piece of research cited by the resource found that 81 percent of 580 corporate computers tested around the world were found to have out of date software patches and had firewall programs disabled.
According to another study, finance, government, legal, retail and utilities sectors have all seen an increase in the number of network security vulnerabilities to which they are exposed.
Roy Hills, technical director at research firm NTA, said in a statement: "These high-risk vulnerabilities are widely known and actively exploited by hackers, leaving many companies susceptible to attack."
In recent web security developments, Mozilla has confirmed that there is a critical vulnerability in the newest version of its Firefox program.
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