Houston, Texas – July 20, 2015 – The Online Trust Alliance (OTA) released its annual Online Trust Honor Roll, ranking websites based on their security features. The results may come as a shock to you, at least if you were previously unaware of and unprepared for all the security threats out there in cyberspace. For the rest of us, we just shook our heads sadly.
The OTA handed out grades to around 1,000 websites in various sectors, including the top 50 government sites, 100 finance sites, 500 online retailers, 50 social networking sites, 50 news and media sites, and 50 Internet of Things (IoT) providers. This is the seventh year the OTA has released its honor roll of the winners. Of all sites, 44 percent made the honor roll, a significant improvement over 30 percent last year. But of those not selected, 46 percent received failing scores, with only 10 percent occupying the satisfactory category in between.
Starting in 2015, websites are awarded bonus points in the site, server, and infrastructure security category for having a web application firewall (WAF) such as Cloudbric. In total, 35 percent of all sites had a WAF, led by online retailers (47 percent) and government sites (46 percent), which may account for improvement in both categories over 2014. The OTA is currently considering upgrading the bonus points for having a WAF to base points next year, in recognition of their protection against myriad threats and the fact that unprotected websites are sitting ducks.
“Improvements in the financial and e-commerce sectors are a good start,” said chief security architect of Cloudbric Sang Gyoo Sim, “but still many other business owners who are mistaken they are not relevant to online security haven’t improved their security level. The smallest data breach can lead to far more sensitive data, because any hacked account information may lead to a second wave of attacks.”
Read the full report here.
The OTA is an informal industry working group based in Bellevue, Washington. Founded in 2005, they began releasing the Honor Roll in 2009. Cloudbric is a free Web Application Firewall service based in Houston, Texas. It is supported by Penta Security, the largest cybersecurity firm of the Asia-Pacific region.