How much better is it to have a world-class patching process compared to an average one? Could it ever be detrimental to patch too fast? And what does patching have to do with cholera? Two earlier Verizon Business Risk Team Studies shed more light on this subject.

The recently published “Verizon Business 2008 Data Breach Investigations Report” describes characteristics of more than 500 computer crime investigations performed over the past four years. Our data shows that in only 18% of cases in the hacking category (see Figure 11) did the attack have anything to do with a “patchable” vulnerability. Further analysis in the study (Figure 12) showed that 90% of those attacks would have been prevented had patches been applied that were six months in age or older! Significantly, patching more frequently than monthly would have mitigated no additional cases.

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At considerable investment in time and resources, Verizon Business began an initiative in 2007 to identify a comprehensive set of metrics to record during each data compromise investigation. As a result of this effort, we pursued a post-mortem examination of over 500 security breach and data compromise engagements between 2004 and 2007 which provided us with the vast amount of factual evidence used to compile this study. This data covers 230 million compromised records. Amongst these are roughly one-quarter of all publicly disclosed data breaches in both 2006 and 2007, including three of the five largest data breaches ever reported.

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I used to think that Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) and Managed Security Services (MSS) were a waste of time. After all, most attacks that I had worked on began, and were over, within seconds, and were typically totally automated. In my mind, an IDS alarm going off, or getting a call from the SOC operator, would be like the captain of a ship getting an alarm such as: “Captain, a torpedo passed through engines #2 and #3, and exited the starboard flank. We will be sinking in seven minutes.”

But the Verizon Business 2008 Data Breach Investigations Report tells a very different story.

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