Hackers Succeed In Doing More Harm Than Insiders
External hackers were to blame for most data thefts last year, while in-house incidents contributed to a 20% of computer security attacks/crimes, according to according to the Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report for 2020.In its 13th Data Breach Investigations Report, which probed some 4,000 intrusions and network breaches in 2019, Verizon found that the online world is still a fairly bad place if you’re not equiped to defend yourself and your customers from external therats you are are in real tgrouble.
Verizon's research shows that organised crime is behind a high number of successful cyber-attacks. The report shows that financial gain remains the key driver for cyber-crime with nearly nine in 10 (86 percent) breaches that werer investigated being financially-driven.
The vast majority of breaches continue to be caused by external actors, 70 percent, with organised crime accounting for 55 percent of these.
Credential theft and social attacks such as phishing and business email compromises cause the majority of breaches (over 67 percent), and specifically:
- 37 percent of credential theft breaches used stolen or weak credentials
- 25 percent involved phishing
- Human error accounted for 22 percent
Verizon also highlight that a two-fold increase in web application breaches over the past two years, to 43 percent and stolen credentials were used in over 80 percent of these cases - a worrying trend as business-critical workflows continue to move to the cloud.
Ransomware also saw a slight increase, found in 27 percent of malware incidents (compared to 24 percent in 2019 DBIR); 18 percent of organizations reported blocking at least one piece of ransomware last year. The 2020 DBIR now includes detailed analysis of 16 industries, and shows that, while security remains a challenge across the board, there are significant differences across industry sectors. In manufacturing, 23 percent of malware incidents involved ransomware, compared to 61 percent in the public sector and 80 percent in educational services. Errors accounted for 33 percent of public sector breaches, but only 12 percent of manufacturing.
Insight:
Manufacturing: External actors leveraging malware, such as password dumpers, app data capturers and downloaders to obtain proprietary data for financial gain, account for 29 percent of Manufacturing breaches.
Retail: 99 percent of incidents were financially-motivated, with payment data and personal credentials continuing to be prized. Web applications, rather than Point of Sale (POS) devices, are now the main cause of Retail breaches.
Financial and insurance: 30 percent of breaches here were caused by web application attacks, primarily driven by external actors using stolen credentials to get access to sensitive data stored in the cloud. The move to online services is a key factor.
Educational Services: Ransomware attacks doubled this year, accounting for approximately 80 percent of malware attacks vs. last year’s 45 percent, and social engineering accounted for 27 percent of incidents.
Healthcare: Basic human error accounted for 31 percent of Healthcare breaches, with external breaches at 51 percent (up from 42 percent in the 2019 DBIR), slightly more common than insiders at 48 percent (59 percent last year). This vertical remains the industry with the highest number of internal bad actors, due to greater access to credentials.
Public sector: Ransomware accounted for 61 percent of malware-based incidents. 33 percent of breaches are accidents caused by insiders.
Organisations have clearly become better at identifying breaches with only 6 percent found to have beeen left undiscovered for a year, compared with 47 percent previously and this is tought to be linked to new mandatory reporting requirements being introduced worldwide.
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