Half of the Largest Companies: Threat Vulnerable
October 24, 2016
Compromised Credentials, a research report by Digital Shadows reveals that around 1,000 companies comprising of Forbes Global 2000 are at risk as credentials of their employees are leaked or compromised.
As reported by Channel EMEA in Digital Shadows Global Study Reveals UAE Tops List in Middle East for…
The report found that 97 percent of those 1000 of the Forbes Global 2000 companies, spanning all businesses sectors and geographical regions, had leaked credentials publicly available online, many of them from third-party breaches.
Owing to large-scale data breaches in recent times, credentials of 5.5 million employees are available in public domain for anyone to see. Social networks like LinkedIN, MySpace and Tumblr were the affliction points of these breaches, the report states.
Analyzed geographically, companies in Middle-East seem to be the most affected:
The report revealed that the most affected country in the Middle East – with over 15,000 leaked credentials was the UAE. Saudi Arabia (3360), Kuwait (203) followed by Qatar (99) made up the rest of the list. This figure is relatively small as compared to the global figure due to the lower percentage of organizations that reside in the Middle East.
Affected organizations may not be able to contain the damages by simply resetting the passwords of the employees. It also needs to be seen if the information available is contemporary, not reposted and is unique. Moreover, mere password resetting can cause lot of friction within the IT departments of the organizations.
Without proper analysis, it will be difficult for the affected companies to gauge the extent of the damage. But considering the PR nightmare it leads to, will these companies come forward and acknowledge the breaches?
Vishal Ingole, October 24, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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