Data Breach Speaker: Organized Crime + Vendor Error

Here’s a statistic that’ll get your attention! 285 million records were compromised in 2008 according to a new data breach study from Verizon Business. The report claims that organized crime is responsible for a large increase in the number of breached corporate electronic records.

The report of industries affected by data breach shows that Financial Services was the major gainer in 2008. That industry doubled its percentage of data breach to 30% while Retail is still the most affected industry (barely) at 31%. The shift to data breach in Financial Services will affect all of us more drastically.

According to the study, which Verizon Business compiled using data from the 90 confirmed corporate network breaches it recorded last year, roughly 93% of all records breached came from the financial sector. The company also says that nine out of every 10 of these breaches involved “groups identified by law enforcement as engaged in organized crime.” Verizon says that the 285 million electronic records breached last year were more than the total number of records breached in the past four years combined. The reason for the sharp increase is that attacks on financial firms’ networks have become more sophisticated and successful, the company says. Although only 17% of the attacks studied by Verizon constituted “highly sophisticated” data breaches, these attacks were responsible for 95% of all records breached. Verizon says that cybercriminals are targeting financial service companies’ networks to get customers’ personal identification number (PIN) information in order to withdraw cash directly from their accounts. Cybercriminals are also selling PIN information on the black market, the company says. Read the full report on data breach. (Scroll down when you see “285”). Technorati Profile

Data Breach Speaker John Sileo

Posted by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo in Identity Theft Prevention and tagged Data Breach, Data Breach Speaker, verizon business.