Security News > 2024 > May > Too many ICS assets are exposed to the public internet

"Our research reveals alarming gaps and unexpected trends in enterprise infrastructure, including the decay of network segmentation, persistent challenges in attack surface management, and the increasing volume of dark matter on modern networks," said HD Moore, CEO. IT and OT are converging, expanding the attack surface of organizations and requiring new techniques to discover and manage assets.

OT systems are high-value targets for attackers and are consistently exposed to untrusted networks.

Over 7% of the ICS assets sampled are exposed to the public internet.

Network "Dark matter"- devices that are often unmanaged by IT and rarely updated - comprises 19% of enterprise networks, while a further 45% of these devices offer limited management capabilities.

Although Windows 2012 R2 and Ubuntu 14.04 are the most common EoL operating systems observed, obsolete versions of VMware ESXi and out-of-support network devices are serious concerns.

Remote Desktop Protocol security has improved on Windows with the introduction of Network Layer Authentication support, but this has not carried over to Linux-based RDP implementations like xrdp, and many Windows systems have kept older, more vulnerable configurations.

News URL

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2024/05/17/organizations-expanding-attack-surface/