Instead, attackers exploit simple, preventable security weaknesses that organisations repeatedly fail to fix.

Danny Mitchell, cybersecurity writer at Heimdal Security, examined high-profile breaches from the past decade and found that most began with stolen credentials, unpatched systems, or phishing attacks. 

When we examine the anatomy of major data breaches over the past decade, a clear pattern emerges,” Mitchell said. 

“Attackers consistently exploit the same entry points because organisations continue to leave these doors open. Understanding where breaches begin is the first step toward preventing them.”

1. Compromised Credentials

One of the most common vulnerabilities is stolen or weak credentials. In the 2013 Target breach, hackers accessed the network through a third-party HVAC vendor. 

Using these credentials, they moved across the system and stole 40 million credit card numbers and 70 million customer records. 

Mitchell says, “Organisations often grant excessive access to third-party vendors without implementing proper oversight or segmentation. Once attackers obtain valid credentials, they appear as legitimate users, making detection extremely difficult.”

2. Unpatched Systems

Equifax’s 2017 breach reveals another recurring issue, which is the failure to update systems. Attackers exploited a known vulnerability in Apache Struts, a patch that had existed for months. 

The breach exposed sensitive data of 147 million people. “Equifax was breached using a vulnerability that had a publicly available patch,” Mitchell notes. “This breach occurred not because the attack was unavoidable, but because basic patch management processes failed.”

3. Phishing and Email-Based Attacks

Email is an easy entry point for attackers. In 2011, Epsilon suffered a breach after phishing campaigns targeted client databases, affecting millions of customers from brands including JPMorgan Chase and Walgreens. 

Mitchell explains, “Email-based attacks work because they exploit human behaviour rather than technical vulnerabilities. Even with advanced security tools, a convincing phishing email can bypass technical defences if an employee clicks a malicious link or provides credentials on a fake login page.”

Why These Weaknesses Persist

Mitchell identifies three systemic reasons organisations remain vulnerable:

• Over-Privileged Accounts: Many employees and vendors retain access rights they no longer need.
• Poor Visibility: Security teams often lack tools to monitor unusual network activity.
• Tool Sprawl: Multiple disconnected security systems create blind spots that attackers exploit.

Steps to Reduce Risk

Mitchell suggests helpful measures to block attackers at the most common entry points:

• Enforce strict privileged access controls and multi-factor authentication.
• Use DNS filtering to block connections to malicious domains.
• Deploy endpoint detection and response systems for real-time monitoring.
• Implement automated patch management and prioritise critical vulnerabilities.

“Attackers will always choose the path of least resistance,” Mitchell concludes. “By closing these common entry points, organisations force attackers to use more sophisticated, and therefore more detectable, methods. While perfect security may be impossible, you can make your organisation a harder target than the alternatives.”

The programme was powered by New Horizons, a frontline global IT training company with a presence in over 80 countries of the world.

New Horizons is the IT consultant/partner to Spring of Life school, a relationship that has spanned many years.

Speaking at the graduation ceremony organized by the school recently, the Founder/Director of the School Mrs. Stella Adibe expressed her joy that Spring of Life and Fountain of Wisdom has been living up to its billing as top-quality and front-row IT-driven School in Enugu for many years and that the achievement by this group of students is glaring testaments to that fact.

She reiterated her delight at the productive strategic International ICT Partnership that her school established with New Horizons, a US-based, world’s largest International IT Skills and Certification Training Organization that has a presence in 80 countries of the world.

The MD/CEO of New Horizons Nigeria, Mr. Tim Akano, in his congratulatory message said he was proud of the first set of 20 MTA-certified students from the Spring of Life schools. He promised that New Horizons Nigeria will continually support the school to make it the epitome of an IT-driven school in this 21st century.

Also, the general manager, Northern Region, New Horizons, Mr. David Abolagba said the outstanding performances by the students confirmed that Enugu and Nigeria at large are blessed with sharp and focused youths who in the future, will emerge as Nigeria’s Industry Captains that will become tomorrow’s entrepreneurial giants like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mack Zuckerberg, Google Boys, etc.

Abolagba said these sets of young entrepreneurs would have been convincingly positioned with their skills to bail the country out of its total dependence on oil and become an IT-driven country like India, China, Singapore, Malaysia, etc that are dominating the world’s lucrative IT market.

Being certified as a Microsoft Technology Associate demonstrates that these students have laid a solid foundation for their information technology career and built the skills needed to get the most out of any organization even at a developmental stage.

A Microsoft Technology Associate is a trained professional whose skills are used in a variety of business functions across many different industries, for example, Database, IT Security, Mobile App Developer, Network Administrator, Project Manager, Software Developer, etc.

Other commonly listed top reasons among both groups include meeting compliance requirements (SMB: 57%; enterprise: 56%) and efficiency in delivering cybersecurity solutions (SMB: 43%; enterprise: 66%).

To help IT security workers reach that highly sought-after professional level, Kaspersky has expanded its online training portfolio with the Advanced Malware Analysis Techniques course for established reverse engineers, incident responders, and digital forensic specialists.

In 2020, businesses were forced to accelerate their digital transformation by months, or even years, resulting in the rapid increase of complex IT infrastructure and related security risks. In combination with the shortage of cybersecurity specialists and a lack of capacity to develop talent internally, this situation has compelled companies to look for external support.

Kaspersky’s global research, conducted among IT business security decision-makers, shows that companies are turning to outsourcing of certain functions to gain expert help.

In 2021, specialist expertise has surpassed even financial effectiveness as the main reason to bring in third-party services for business globally and locally across the META region.

Additionally, last year, enterprises mainly outsourced IT security because of the added efficiency they provided in delivering security solutions (66%), while SMBs were guided by shortages of expert skills inside the organisation (80%) and financial considerations (60%).

Improving defenses (40%) and the level of specialist security expertise (39%) are expected to dominate IT security budget expenditure for all sizes of business – and were listed as the main drivers for increasing business spending on cybersecurity.

All of this means that highly qualified security experts are more in demand today than ever. Those who want to enhance their career must seize the moment to acquire new, rare skills.

To help professionals from all over the world take their skills to a new level, Kaspersky has expanded its training portfolio with the new Advanced Malware Analysis Techniques course.

The focus of the course is advanced static analysis. That is because this is the most reliable way to determine the functionality of the code and find actionable artifacts for cybersecurity incidents involving previously unseen malicious code. This allows organisations affected by APTs to define adequate damage assessment and incident response.

The course also heavily features exclusive Kaspersky know-how on decryption automation, decoding and other processing of the samples, which helps not only optimise routine tasks, but preserve a researcher’s work in code.

The training was developed by Igor Kuznetsov, Chief Security Researcher and member of Kaspersky’s revered Global Research and Analysis Team.

Igor cherry-picked exercises from his own work on cases like Lazarus, MiniDuke and Carbanak, to cover the most important aspects of static analysis in IDA Pro while also demonstrating unique cornerstone cases that require special treatment.

“During my 20-year career at Kaspersky, I have had a chance to work on many interesting and notorious APT campaigns. The Advanced Malware Analysis Techniques course has assembled this expertise to transfer it to the next generation of IT security professionals. We hope that our experience and the tools that we share will help level up the experience of working with cybersecurity incidents – such as analysing complicated malware or doing onsite incident response and triaging samples correctly,” comments Igor Kuznetsov, Chief Security Researcher at Kaspersky.

The course contains 60 video lessons and 100 hours of virtual lab time for hands-on learning. Participants will have 6-months of access to complete the training at a convenient pace.