The report supplies distinctive insights into how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the information breach panorama
Verizon has launched the 14th installment of its annual Information Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) that analyzed 5,258 confirmed information breaches, a rise from 3,950 within the report’s earlier concern. As is likely to be anticipated, the 2021 version, which used enter from 83 contributing organizations from around the globe, additionally sheds distinctive mild on the impression that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the information breach panorama.
With a sizeable a part of the workforce compelled to work remotely, the pandemic-powered transition has been mirrored by the rise in sure sorts of cyberattacks. Phishing assaults, a persistent and most acute menace for years, noticed a rise by 11%; in the meantime, the variety of ransomware assaults grew by 6% in comparison with the yr prior. A complete of 85% of breaches concerned a human component.
“This enhance correlates with our expectations given the preliminary rush in phishing and COVID-19-related phishing lures because the worldwide stay-at-home orders went into impact,” reads the Verizon 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report.
Certainly, all through the pandemic, COVID-19-themed phishing assaults have been popping up left and proper. Initially, menace actors tried to dupe victims by impersonating the World Well being Group (WHO); nevertheless, extra lately, they tailored their techniques and tried to money in on the distribution effort with varied vaccine scams.
With an rising variety of companies taking steps towards digital transformation and transitioning extra of their operations to the cloud, the report additionally examined the challenges they face alongside the way in which and located that assaults on net purposes represented 39% of all breaches.
“Because the variety of firms switching business-critical capabilities to the cloud will increase, the potential menace to their operations could turn into extra pronounced, as malicious actors look to take advantage of human vulnerabilities and leverage an elevated dependency on digital infrastructures,” Verizon Enterprise CEO Tami Erwin mentioned in a press release.
The report additionally carried out an evaluation of 12 totally different industries and located that whereas all of them face cybersecurity challenges, these differ from trade to trade based mostly on varied facets, starting from their infrastructure to the kind of information they deal with. Private information accounted for 83% of information compromised within the monetary and insurance coverage industries, whereas within the scientific and technical providers they made up “solely” 49% of all breached information.
Essentially the most important menace to the general public administration vertical is social engineering assaults, which had been behind 69% of the breaches. Unsurprisingly, the retail trade is predominantly focused by financially motivated menace actors trying to make a fairly penny by acquiring fee playing cards and private info.