Eye-opening Data Breach Stats and How You Can Protect Your Network
Data breaches have become ever-present in the landscape of today’s working world, some attacks and breaches are so violent it almost seems an impossible task to defend yourself against them. These breaches can appear out of nowhere and take organisations completely off-guard and completely offline, forcing them into severe consequences.
However, while we’re seeing more data breaches than in years past, being proactive can make an enormous difference. Being caught sleeping is not how any modern organisation with a network-based infrastructure want to be seen. This article is a great place to start and expand your knowledge on data breaches, and how you can work on being proactive to prevent them.
Different Types of Data Breaches
Data breaches occur when hackers break into networks and take important data. Having a well-structured cybersecurity is of paramount importance and requires employee education and organisational awareness of the main ways network data can be breached.
- Password attacks – Hackers can use various mechanisms to acquire passwords, including software that allows them to “guess” passwords. Hackers can also buy databases full of stolen passwords, this can be rewarding for them seeing as many people use the same or similar password for most of their personal accounts or data.
- Malware/Ransomware attacks – Hackers now can launch no warning attacks by injecting malicious software into vulnerable programmable devices, services, or networks.
- Phishing/Spear Phishing – In this instance the purpose is to gather personal information and login credentials through targeted attacks. These attacks can get very creative even going as far as splicing together voicemails to create recordings impersonating senior executives, who direct employees to release funds or data directly into the hands of cyber criminals.
- Eavesdropping (sniffing) attacks – Which take advantage of unsecure network communications connections, intercepting data as it’s transmitted.
- Cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks – Where a hacker executes malicious code in a target’s web browser, often through web applications.
- Man-in-the-middle attacks – Which involve redirecting network traffic, spying on victims, or sabotaging communication after breaching a system with stolen login credentials.
10 Statistics about Data Breaches
These stats offer a deeper and clearer look into the ever increasing risk of data breaches. Attacks prove expensive and often involve methods that can bypass the majority of traditional cybersecurity products on the market today.
- Attackers will increasingly target technically advanced and biometric security features like touch ID sensors, facial recognition and passcodes (Experian.
- Industry analysts predict that we’ll see an enterprise-wide attack on a national network of a major financial institution in the coming few years (Experian).
- Symantec reports that for the first time since 2013, ransomware declined 20% overall, but increased by 12% for enterprises (Symantec).
- We can expect a cloud vendor to suffer a breach that compromises the sensitive information of hundreds of Fortune 1000 companies (Experian).
- One prominent example of the increasing scope of data breaches is the 2019 attack on Facebook, when 540 million user records via the Amazon Cloud Service (CBS).
- In its annual report, IBM estimates the global average cost of a data breach in 2021 at $3.86 million (IBM).
- Varonis reports that 62% of breaches occurring in 2020 that did not centre on error, misuse, or physical action involved stolen credentials, brute force, or phishing (Varonis).
- Nearly 5,000 websites every month are breached by hackers using form-jacking code (Symantec).
- Verizon estimates that more than a third of data breaches reported in 2018 involved internal actors (Verizon).
- A study conducted by IBM reveals that the average time to identify a data breach in 2020 was more than seven months – 228 days (IBM).
Therefore, after all the stats and facts cybersecurity can only remain as secure and as strong as it’s latest update allows it to be, therefore it is essential for organisations to preconceive the risks they face from data breaches. This will allow businesses to be better prepared and ready, and have strong and reliable security in place in case they are the victims of a breach.
