24. June 2021

This article has been indexed from E Hacking News – Latest Hacker News and IT Security News

According to a survey published by WhiteHat Security on 22nd June 2021, two-thirds of apps in the utility sector and 63 percent of them that are deployed by the public sector are severely vulnerable, compromising security every day. 

In total, the majority of the applications, of around eleven industries experienced serious vulnerability each day throughout the last year. According to the company’s monthly AppSec Stats Flash analysis for June, the top three businesses on the list are  – utilities, public administration, and professional services  – these require at least 288 days on average to address vulnerabilities. 

The sluggish patching rate is because there is a wide range of legacy apps in many situations that don’t have an active development team working on them, notes Vice President of Strategy at WhiteHat Security, Setu Kulkarni. 

“Once you find the vulnerability, fixing that vulnerability is not a trivial process because you have to find the right development team, and in many cases, that development team is long gone,” he says. “Some of the applications that we use every day are the ones that have been in production for the longest time.” 

In total it was 205 days on aggregate for issues resolved over the last 3 months for serious vulnerabilities, up from 194 days in WhiteHat’s report published in January and substantially exceeding 148 days for the entire 2020 period, as per the report.