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A Rapid7 audit of the Fortune 500 companies on a variety of security fronts finds that the firms are doing a pretty good job in reducing entry points for hackers, but a lousy job at email security.
The big picture: The key numbers from this study come from two tests. One measured each firm's exposure to the internet by tabulating the number of services an eager hacker might connect to. A second tested adoption of security against sending fraudulent emails in a firm's name.
The bad news: The findings show that 330 out of the Fortune 500 companies do not have computers set up to prevent sending fraudulent emails in a firm's name.
- Email wasn't designed to check if the email address listed as the sender actually sent the message. For example, a bad guy could send an invoice that looks like an invoice from a company email address even without access to a company email account.
- There is a free add-on security protocol known as DMARC that checks with a server if an email is authentic and prevents those scams. Only 170 of the Fortune 500 use DMARC and have it configured to prevent fake messages from reaching an inbox.
- "These are the best resourced companies in the world. They could easily run DMARC," said Tod Beardsley of Rapid7.
The good news: Fortune 500 companies only average around 500 exposed services to the internet. And while 500 may seem like a lot, given the size of the companies, Beardsley says he was expecting more.
- "500 is lower than I was expecting," he said. "And only each only exposing 5–10 vulnerable services is lower than I was expecting."
- The vulnerable networking protocol SMB was used to propagate the massive WannaCry malware in 2017.
- "98% secure is pretty good. Clean up the last 2%, and we could prevent the next WannaCry," said Beardsley.