As much as 25% of cyber losses for the largest companies are machine identity related and, in the U.S., as much as 13% of total economic losses due to cyber events are related to unprotected machine identities, according to a new report by AIR Worldwide, sponsored by Venafi.
The new report examines the economic impact of poorly protected machine identities, and finds that between $51 billion and $72 billion in losses to the global economy could be removed with the use of adequate risk management protection of machine identities.
Today, machines are fundamental to the way all businesses operate, enabling global interconnectedness and communication as well as the control and flow of sensitive data. While machines have undoubtedly benefitted many industries and altered our way of life for the better, the way in which they connect makes them a primary security risk for organisations across all industries, explains the report.
“Cybercriminals routinely target machine identities and their capabilities because they are often poorly protected. Once compromised, machine identities are powerful tools for attackers, allowing them to hide malicious activity, evade security controls and steal a wide range of sensitive data,” explains the report.
Specifically, claims the report, unprotected machine identities account for $15 billion to $21 billion in economic losses in the U.S., or 9% to 13% of total U.S. economic losses due to cyber events, which are estimated at as much as $163 billion.
At the same time, the most likely to be hit are the larger firms with revenues of more than $2 billion, with between 14% and 25% of the cyber losses for these organisations being machine identity related.
In comparison, and suggesting that larger companies will see a greater share of losses, just 6% to 16% of cyber losses for smaller companies are machine identity related, explains the report.
Kevin Bocek, Vice President, Security Strategy and Threat Intelligence, Venafi, commented: “The scope and scale of this project could only be analyzed using the groundbreaking technique of AIR Worldwide, their sophisticated model has revealed the machine identity risks Fortune 500 organizations face today.
“Unfortunately, many businesses are relying on processes and techniques from over 20 years ago, which poorly protect machine identities and, as AIR Worldwide found, can result in billions of dollars of loses. Digital transformation is dependent on cloud, microservices and APIs, and all of this requires the authentication and privacy that machine identities provide. Cybercriminals understand that breaking this link means hitting the jackpot.”
To provide the estimates, catastrophe risk modeller AIR combined cyber event data sets with assessments of more than 100,000 companies’ performance in a number of areas of cybersecurity. AIR then gave security ratings that assessed the management of cybersecurity, which includes things like proper configuration and management of SSL/TLS certificates; user behaviour; and indicators of compromise.
Eric Dallal, Senior Scientist at AIR, said: “We’re excited to collaborate with Venafi and be a part of this innovative study which evaluates the current cost of machine identity breaches.
“Estimating the financial impacts of cyber security practices is always a challenging problem, requiring a combination of data, models, and subject matter expertise. We were able to leverage our experience when we developed a model estimating the impact of cyber security practices on data compromise event frequency. The results of this study show that there are very real costs when failing to adequately protect machine identities.”
