WannaCry and Petya ransomware have shown for the millionth time how critical it is for systems to be fully up-to-date, but despite the fact that thousands of computers are at risk, CIOs and IT professionals do not seem to be particularly concerned about the increase in the number of attacks.
A study conducted by ISACA with the participation of 450 CIOs shows that not everyone is in a hurry to install the latest updates released by Microsoft for the Windows operating system, and in some cases, IT professionals wait more than a month before installing the patches.
27 percent of respondents admitted that ransomware-infected systems affected their organizations, but 76 percent of them claimed they are ready for another attack against their networks.
15 percent of IT professionals said that no new security measures were implemented after the WannaCry and Petya attacks, and even more concerning, 83 percent is estimated that a new ransomware attack is expected very soon. And if this indeed happens, then 6 percent of IT professionals are ready to pay the ransom to have their files decrypted.
The most concerning thing is that less than 25 percent of IT admins deploy patches within the first 24 hours of release, while others wait more than a month to install them, despite the obvious security issue that exposes their computers to attacks.
“Our poll shows that more than one in four organizations typically wait more than a month to apply the latest software patches,” said ISACA CEO Matt Loeb.
«Taking into account the scaling of volume and the complexity of changes that businesses face, they must place great emphasis on the speed with which they install patches as it is a critical component of an organization's protection against the devastating consequences of an attack.»
Fully up-to-date systems were safe from both WannaCry and Petya attacks, and Microsoft released an emergency patch for Windows XP to protect computers running that older operating system as well. Statistics have shown, however, that outdated Windows 7 was the biggest victim of WannaCry.
