Dive Brief:

• Cybercriminals’ evolving attack strategies and use of encryption to hide their tracks is raising the stakes for enterprises looking to protect their digital assets, according to Cisco’s 2016 Midyear Cybersecurity Report released Wednesday.
• As a result, constraining the operational space of attackers is the biggest challenge facing businesses today, according to the report.
• The situation will likely only get worse as hackers employ new forms of ransomware that can change strategies and self-replicate to maximize their effectiveness.

Dive Insight:

Cisco says visibility across the enterprise network is a huge challenge for all businesses today. On average, organizations take up to 200 days to identify new threats, according to the report. Better visibility is therefore key to reducing the amount of damage that can be done.

But hackers’ expanding focus on server-side exploits is making enterprise cybersecurity more difficult. In the first six months of 2016, hacker profits went through the roof as they capitalized on businesses’ lack of network visibility.

"Attackers are going undetected and expanding their time to operate," said Marty Roesch, vice president and chief architect, Security Business Group, Cisco. "To close the attackers’ windows of opportunity, customers will require more visibility into their networks and must improve activities, like patching and retiring aging infrastructure lacking in advanced security capabilities."

To better defend networks, Cisco recommends that companies improve network hygiene, integrate defenses into capabilities and back up critical data, among other things.