Cyber Threats
ENISA says System Failure is on the Rise
The agency’s latest reports said that system failure comprises more than half of telecom incidents for 2020. Sixty-nine percent of incidents also affected the qualified trust services during the same year.
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The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) recently released two annual reports on telecom security incidents and trust security incidents for 2020. These documents provide a thorough analysis of incidental root causes and the impact of such incidents. Additionally, these evaluate multinational trends.
According to Telecom Security Incidents 2020, faulty software changes and/or updates are a major factor in terms of impact, resulting in over 300 million hours lost or 40% of the total number of hours lost.
Moreover, the report revealed that system failures continue to be the most prominent cause of incidents, leading to severe impact. It represents about half of total user hours lost or 419 user hours. System failure is also the most frequent root cause of incidents, totaling 61% of reported incidents.
However, while system failures continue to dominate as the most frequent cause of incidents, multinational trends show that these incidents are decreasing in size.
The document further explained that 26% of telecom security incidents are caused by human error—just at par with the 2019 percentage. Almost a third of incidents were also flagged as third-party failures (29%).
Meanwhile, the Trust Services Security Incidents 2020 revealed that, once again, system failures remain the major root cause of incidents, with 53% reporting incidents typically due to hardware failure or system bugs. Ranking second is incidents caused by human errors.
According to the report, the level of the severity remains low, indicating that Trust Service Providers (TSPs) report more incidents, even those that are less severe.
Sixty-nine percent of total incidents affected qualified trust services in 2020. This is higher compared with just about 33% of incidents reported on non-qualified trust services.
ENISA’s latest reports highlight the importance of well mapping cybersecurity trends and pointing sector weaknesses. This information is also significant to ensure systems are well-secured, ensuring smooth-sailing services for users.
The advance of telecom technologies also means that enterprises must future-proof their systems to avoid system failures that could cost them their business.
To learn more about the various cybersecurity threats looming in the global telecom ecosystem, check the following Trend Micro forward-looking reports: