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Over that past several years, we have seen a steady pace of major organizations being breached. When a cyberattack strikes, it can be devastating for a business. Not only do attacks put a company’s reputation at risk, but they can also lead to sensitive data being passed to criminals on the dark web, potentially impacting the lives of millions of unknowing victims.
While the total cost of these breaches is hard to pin down, we know that breaches are costly. On average, data breaches cost $4.45 million, according to the IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2023. But we’ve seen recent breaches with estimated costs that may tilt that scale in the future.
The costliest breaches of all time include:
- Epsilon, estimated at $4 Billion
- Equifax, estimated at $1.4 Billion
- Veteran’s Affairs, estimated at up to $500 Million
- Yahoo, estimated at $470 Million
- Target, estimated at $300 Million
Direct costs include not only investigation and remediation efforts, but forensic audits, regulatory fines, litigation, bank reimbursement demands, legal settlements, providing credit monitoring services, customer service costs and damage control measures. In addition to lost business, aftermath costs include improving security infrastructure and implementing measures to prevent future breaches.
But lengthy recovery times also impact the total cost of a breach. And a major healthcare provider is certainly feeling this pain as the recovery time for their breach lingers on. Axios estimates that this breach is already costing providers up to a billion dollars a day in revenue (vs 2023 billings). And the cost of catching up will continue to rise in the aftermath.
Granted, many of the most expensive breaches have happened in the recent past. However with new cyberattacks using tactics such as AI, we may see more frequent and more costly breaches in the near future.
In fact, in a recent cybersecurity advisory, CISA warned that unauthorized code has become a major tactic for cybercriminals recommending enterprises routinely take inventory of assets and data to identify authorized and unauthorized devices and software.. The agency recommends measures to counter this threat vector, “Allowlisting is important because antivirus solutions may fail to detect the execution of malicious portable executables when the files use any combination of compression, encryption, or obfuscation.”
Stop Unauthorized Code Solution
In discussions with many Global 5000 companies, we have heard a common thread in discussions around breach prevention. Many of these large organizations are concerned about how to prevent unauthorized code from deploying in their networks. Seemingly innocuous macros, PowerShell scripts, applications, and containers can conceal malicious code from intrusion detection systems, increasing your company’s risk of malware attacks, zero-day exploits and more.
That’s why it’s critical to only allow the execution of approved code across your enterprise. Venafi offers a unique Stop Unauthorized Code solution that prevents the execution of unauthorized code. The solution maintains rigorous control over code execution by verifying trusted signers and enforcing strict code execution policies, ensuring the protection of data and systems.
And it is resonating with our top customers. Shawn Irving, Chief Information Security Officer at Ferguson plc is one of the early adopters of Venafi’s Stop Unauthorized Code solution.
He notes, "As part of Ferguson's ongoing efforts to build and improve our DevSecOps tools and automation, we are integrating Venafi's Stop Unauthorized Code Solution for its end-to-end capabilities for Kubernetes container signing, signature verification, policy configuration and enforcement, and runtime verification to prevent the execution of unsigned or tampered images."
Breaches are relatively rare. But they are not entirely uncommon. And they can be very costly. Are you ready to look at how your organization can beef up your breach defenses by stopping unauthorized code? Contact us to see where we may be able to help.