Rapid7’s Q1 2025 incident response data highlights several key initial access vector (IAV) trends, shares salient examples of incidents investigated by the Rapid7 Incident Response (IR) team, and digs into threat data by industry as well as some of the more commonly seen pieces of malware appearing in incident logs. Is having no MFA solution in place still one of the most appealing vulnerabilities for threat actors? Will you see the same assortment of malware regardless of whether you work in business services or media and communications? And how big a problem could one search engine query possibly be, anyway? The answer to that last question is “very,” as it turns out. As for the rest… Initial access vectors Below, we highlight the key movers and shakers for IAVs across cases investigated by Rapid7’s IR team. While you’ll notice a fairly even split among several vectors such as exposed remote desktop protocol (RDP) services and SEO poisoning, one in particular is clearly the leader of the pack where compromising organizations is concerned: stolen credentials to valid/active accounts with no multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled. Valid account credentials — with no MFA in place to protect the organization should they be misused — are still far and away the biggest stumbling block for organizations investigated by the Rapid7 IR team, occurring in 56% of all incidents this first quarter. Exposed RDP services accounted for 6% of incidents as the IAV, yet they were…Read More