VPN Risk Report Finds More Than Half of Organizations Experienced a VPN-related Cyberattack in the Last Year

Zscaler ThreatLabz 2024 annual report reveals 78% of organizations plan to implement a Zero Trust strategy in the next 12 months in response to increasing exploits

• VPN security concerns rise as 91% of respondents express concerns about VPNs leading to a compromising breach
• The survey identifies the top threats exploiting VPN vulnerabilities to be ransomware (42%), other types of malware (35%), and DDoS attacks (30%)
• Lateral movement is a top concern, as reported by a majority of enterprises breached by VPN, demonstrating significant containment failures
  

SAN JOSE, Calif., May 07, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Zscaler, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZS), the leader in cloud security, today announced the release of the 2024 ThreatLabz VPN Risk Report. The study, reviewed by Cybersecurity Insiders, surveyed over 600 professionals across the security, IT, and networking sectors. It found that 56% of organizations have been targets of cyberattacks exploiting VPN security vulnerabilities in the last year. These incidents underscore the growing imperative to move away from traditional perimeter-based defenses towards a more robust Zero Trust architecture.

This shift to Zero Trust has gained momentum following recent high-profile breaches and critical vulnerabilities with VPNs from two large vendors:

• Ivanti (CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887) - Remote attackers were able to perform authentication bypass and remote command injection exploits.
• Palo Alto Networks OS vulnerability (CVE-2024-3400) - Unauthenticated users exploited the security vendor’s operating system to infiltrate the network. As a result, the vulnerability received the maximum severity score of 10.0.

The Ivanti zero-day vulnerabilities even led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to issue an emergency directive for federal agencies to immediately sever connections with the compromised VPN devices.

VPN security challenges
VPNs have traditionally facilitated remote enterprise access to networks, yet the growing scale and complexity of cyber threats targeting these networks remain a significant concern for security teams. Among those surveyed, 91% voiced apprehension regarding VPNs as weak entry points in their IT infrastructure, highlighted by recent breaches that exposed the dangers of relying on outdated or unpatched VPN infrastructure.