Injection Attacks are no. 1 Target and Twice as Likely to Happen in the UK

Around 60 per cent of all web application attacks in the UK are SQL injection attacks, making them the number one target for attackers. This is according to the latest 2015 Global Threat Intelligence Report (GTIR) announced by NTT Com Security, the global information security and risk management company.

Analysing over six billion attacks in 2014, the GTIR reveals that injection attacks – a code injection technique designed to attack data-driven applications – are twice as likely to happen in the UK as they are anywhere else in the world. The total figure for injection attacks across all countries was 26 per cent, with the UK topping the table at 58 per cent alongside Norway. By comparison, the US and Sweden were 19 per cent, France and Germany 12 per cent, and the Netherlands 10 per cent.

“Injection attacks are the biggest vulnerability in web applications and have been for the last few years,” according to Stuart Reed, Senior Director, Global Product Marketing at NTT Com Security. “If you look at many of the major security breaches that have hit the headlines recently, typically they are injection attacks because they are attractive targets containing sensitive information like credit card details and valuable customer data.

“The question is why after a decade, major breaches are still happening through known holes in web applications and why companies are still failing to put in place effective processes to patch legacy vulnerabilities? Organisations first of all need to ensure that they are building the right level of security into web applications to avoid this type of attack. And second, they need to have effective incident response plans in place to handle any potential or actual security breaches.”

Looking at attack types overall, the GTIR shows that web application attacks represented 10 per cent of all attack types last year in the UK, lower than in other markets, including the US (13 per cent) and Netherlands (17 per cent). The Nordics top the table in terms of web application attacks, with Sweden and Norway seeing a fifth (20 per cent) of all attacks come via web applications.

The GTIR was developed using NTT’s Global Threat Intelligence attack data from the NTT Group companies – including NTT Com Security, Solutionary, Dimension Data, NTT Data, NTT R&D and NTT Innovation Institute, Inc. The key findings in the 2015 Global Threat Intelligence Report are a result of the analysis of approximately six billion worldwide verified attacks over the course of 2014. The data for this report was collected from 16 Security Operations Centres (SOC) and 7 R&D centres, and supported by the thousands of NTT security specialists, professionals and researchers from around the world.

Additional GTIR report highlights (global statistics):

• During 2014, 76% of identified vulnerabilities throughout all systems in the enterprise were more than 2 years old, and almost 9% of them were over 10 years old
• 74% of organisations had no incident response plan in place in 2014
• Incident response engagements involving malware threats increased 9% compared to 2013, from 43% to 52%
• Just 46% of new malware is detected by anti-virus software
• 52% of incidents were the result of malware
• 17 of the top 20 vulnerabilities resided in user systems, not on servers
• 56% of attacks against the NTT global client base originated from IP addresses within the US
• Finance continues to represent the number one targeted sector with 18% of all detected attacks.

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