TRENDING
Nathan Howe , Vice President , Emerging Technology at Zscaler
that need to be managed . To better understand the scale of the problem , Zscaler analyzed organizations in all geographies , partitioning the findings from 53 countries into three regions for ease of understanding – the Americas , EMEA and APAC .
Most at risk
The report found that while 59 % of surveyed organizations were based in the Americas , the EMEA region led the world in overall exposure and potential risk , with 164 CVE vulnerabilities . EMEA-based businesses had the most exposed servers , with an average of 283 exposed servers and 52 exposed public cloud instances each .
Anything that can be accessed can be exploited by unauthorized or malicious users .
“ By understanding their individual attack surfaces and deploying appropriate security measures , including zero trust architecture , companies can better protect their application infrastructure from recurring vulnerabilities that allow attackers to steal data , sabotage systems or hold networks hostage for ransom .”
While attack surface vulnerabilities impact organizations of all sizes , major international companies with more than 20,000 employees are more vulnerable due to their distributed workforce , infrastructure and greater number of applications
They were also more likely to support outdated SSL / TLS protocols and had greater risk of CVE vulnerabilities on average . The EMEA region was followed by the Americas , with 132 CVEs ( 20 % lower than EMEA ), and APAC , with an average of 80 CVE possible vulnerabilities ( 51 % lower than EMEA ).
While the report demonstrated that EMEA businesses had the most online exposure , all regions showed vulnerabilities , making it critical for IT teams to adopt best practices , including zero trust security , to minimize the attack surface and eliminate exposure no matter where they are based .
Top exposed industries
In addition to presenting geographic data , the report tracked corporate attack surfaces by industry , pinpointing the types of organizations most likely to be targeted by cybercriminals . The report analyzed a diverse
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