Survey Highlights the Economics behind Cyberattacks

Increasing the Time It Takes to Breach an Organization by Only Two Days Discourages Profit Motive for Attackers

ME NewsWire) – Palo Alto Networks® (NYSE: PANW), the next-generation security company,Mobilk announced it published results of a survey sponsored by the company to explore the economics of cyberattacks. Available as a downloadable report titled “Flipping the Economics of Attacks,” the survey analysis provides insight into topics like the average earnings of a cyberattacker, the amount of time attacks typically take, and how to prevent successful data breaches by increasing the cost of conducting them.

Key Findings
• Cyberattackers are opportunistic and aim for the easiest targets first.
- 72 percent of survey respondents said they won’t waste time on an attack that will not quickly yield high-value information.
- A majority of the survey’s respondents (73 percent) stated attackers hunt for easy, “cheap” targets.
• Time is the enemy of cyberattackers. 
- An increase of approximately 2 days (40 hours) in the time required to conduct successful cyberattacks can eliminate as much as 60 percent of all attacks.
• The “big payday” is a myth.
- The average adversary earns less than $30,000 annually from their malicious activities, which is 1/4 of a cybersecurity professional’s average yearly wage.
• A strong security posture increases the time to execute an attack.
- It takes double the amount of time (147 hours) for a technically proficient cyberattacker to plan and execute an attack against an organization with an “excellent” IT security infrastructure versus 70 hours for “typical” security.

QUOTES
• “As computing costs have declined, so too have the costs for cyber adversaries to infiltrate an organization, contributing to the growing volume of threats and data breaches.  Understanding the costs, motivations, payouts, and finding ways to flip the cost scenario will be instrumental in reducing the number of breaches we read about almost daily and restoring trust in our digital age.”
- Davis Hake, director of cybersecurity strategy at Palo Alto Networks