Heartbleed risk haunts most big companies

Berlin

BUSINESSES have largely stopped shielding themselves against a Web-security flaw called Heartbleed, providing a growing number of attackers with an easy target, according to security company Venafi Inc.

A year after the vulnerability was made public, 74 per cent of more than 1,600 Forbes Global 2000 companies examined haven't fixed their servers and networks completely, said Kevin Bocek, the company's vice president for security strategy. That's a small improvement from the 76 per cent recorded in August, he added. "You'd think that bigger businesses have got this covered," because most of them have dedicated cybersecurity units, he said. "But as we look at large banks, telcos, manufacturers, they've got much more complex computer systems and they just didn't get around to fixing all their servers."