Forbes has brought Verizon’s 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) to the attention of businesses worldwide, with the bottom line of the document being that the future of cyber security is in securing endpoints.

The DBIR is an annual report of cyber crime statistics that’s widely read and referenced. This year it analysed more than 150,000 incidents across 16 industries and four world regions to arrive at its insights.

For the year 2020, the report finds that 70% of breaches are executed by external hackers, suggesting that endpoints are too easy to target. The next step in cyber security must then be the enhanced protection of endpoints.

Forbes highlights five insights that all lead to the same conclusion about endpoint security: “Autonomous endpoints that can self-heal and regenerate operating systems and configurations are the future of cybersecurity.”

Here is a summary of these insights:

1. Amongst cyber criminals, there’s a big drive towards seeking out unprotected endpoints and exploiting them for financial gain.
   The DBIR shows that many breaches could’ve been averted if endpoints had been protected. This requires dedicated endpoint management in terms of cyber crime prevention, detection, response, and automatic patching of software.
2. Sensitive data is piling up on endpoints that are vulnerable to attack, putting an organisation’s data and its broader systems at risk.
   The DBIR reports that 1 in 4 devices have critical security apps that aren’t compliant, 7 out of 10 Windows 10 devices have versions that are more than a year out of date and, on average, Windows 10 devices are 74 days out of date with current patching. Without endpoint protection an organisation’s systems and data simply aren’t safe.
3. Cyber criminals are opportunistic and 85% of their victims are in the same country.
   Hackers make it their business to be at the ready, so maintaining resilience of endpoints is vital as a first line of defence.
4. Cloud platforms experienced 24% of breaches while on-premise platforms experienced 70%.
   When the coronavirus hit, organisations that were already using cloud-hosted platforms had access to many more applications than those who were not, and to a far higher level of security for teams working from home. It’s been a hard lesson to learn: that keeping up with the latest technology is a vital aspect of a robust cyber security strategy.
5. More than 80% of breaches from hacking incidents use stolen or lost personal data.
   Personal and privileged access details are what cyber criminals are after, and they’ll use brute force attacks to get them. Keeping your endpoint software up to date and using strong passwords is vital to prevent hackers from accessing your data.

Verizon’s 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) is downloadable here.

And you can chat to IronTree about its cloud-hosted cyber security solutions here.