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Sophisticated threats remain one of the main concerns in enterprises today. As environments grow in complexity, malware actors find innovative ways to infiltrate overlooked entry points in the network, hiding behind the scenes to wreak havoc without ever making a full-blown appearance.

After 40 percent of UK businesses reported data breaches or security incidents in the past year, the government wants to completely “design out” complex cyber risks and attacks. To achieve this and strengthen national infrastructure and consumer security, officials plan to issue an impressive challenge to enterprises across the UK.

2020 will bring the end of Windows 7, following Microsoft’s announcement that it will no longer offer support and updates for the operating system starting January 14, 2020. But companies appear to have had a good run with it and are not yet ready to say goodbye, a Kollective survey of 1,000 US and UK enterprise IT professionals has found.

The popularity of container technology has grown fast in software engineering, but 60 percent of organizations suffered at least one container-related security incident in 2018, mostly caused by the advancement of DevOps teams, according to Tripwire’s State of Container Security Report. 71 percent anticipate an increase in container security incidents in 2019, most likely raising the costs of hybrid cloud security.

Key infrastructures are in the crossfire of cyberwarfare. Growing threats and sophisticated nation-state attacks backed by North Korea, China and Russia jeopardize public safety and national security. Which one is the bigger threat?

The lack of political leadership to face targeted attacks is contributing to the poor job the UK is doing on its national security strategy, says a UK government report discussing the cyber security of the nation’s critical national infrastructure.

The US Department of Homeland Security Computer Emergency Readiness Team has just issued a technical alert earlier this week, warning that US companies operating in critical sectors are at risk, as cyberespionage attempts from foreign governments were detected. Key targets include Information Technology (IT), Energy, Healthcare and Public Health, Communications, and Critical Manufacturing. From as early as May 2016, CERT says extensive Advanced Persistent Threat tactics, techniques, and procedures were deployed to infiltrate MSPs (managed service providers) customer networks to steal confidential information and interfere with government and business operations.

Bitdefender has recently investigated a series of advanced cyberattacks aimed at financial institutions, designed to covertly exfiltrate massive amounts of money in coordinated strikes.

Data breaches not only cost companies millions, but they also inflict reputational damage, customer turnover and operational costs. The average cost of a data breach has risen 6.4% to a global average of $3.86 million this year, according to research from the Ponemon Institute.

The topic of cybersecurity is rapidly moving up the agenda of CIOs.

Security executives fear cyberattacks will heavily target critical infrastructures in the near future, but they don’t seem to be doing much about enforcing security policies that also cover IoT devices. Despite the major threat they pose, connected devices have so far been overlooked in security policies. It appears that in general, in spite of the increasing awareness of high-profile cyberattacks and threats, enterprises tend to look the other way rather than invest properly in a cybersecurity strategy.

Some 42 percent of IT security professionals ignore critical security issues, especially if they don’t know how to fix them (16 percent), according to a recent survey of 155 IT professionals by Oyutpost24.