The result of studies by 70 penetration testers show the majority of malicious attackers require less than 12 hours to compromise a target, while four in ten can do it in around six. 17% of the respondents in the survey claimed to need just two hours to find a way through.

About one-third of the testers claimed that they have never been caught while breaking into a client network and accessing the target data, and the consensus was that malicious attackers like to use freely available open source tools and custom tools more than malware tools purchased in the Dark Web.

More than one in five of the attackers claimed that no security controls could stop them, with only 10% finding firewalls to be a problem.

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