Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the past year, there is the likelihood that you’ve read about a security breach. The concept of cyber security, barely a blip in prior years, exploded on the news front in 2014, and the New York Times wrote more than 700 articles detailing such issues — up five times from the year before. You may have heard of some of them, as they included some of the biggest brands like PF Chang’s, Anthem Blue Cross,Apple, and perhaps the biggest one of them all – Sony – who saw the leak of everything from movie scripts to internal memos, as well as threats from the hackers themselves who wanted to see the cancellation of the North Korean comedy film The Interview.
Data breaches have become a part of our collective consciousness. As we and the products we use begin placing data in the cloud to save money and create ease of access, hackers foam at the mouth knowing that they have easy access to data. With cybersecurity technology still trying to catch up with the daily hacks, we live in the daily fear that our credit card numbers, healthcare information, and transaction history have all been seized by data-hungry thieves.
What have we learned from all these cybersecurity issues of the past year however? We dove into Verizon’s annual Data Breach Investigations Report to look at just how complex and crazy cyber threats have become. The numbers are a sobering realization as to just how fragile our technology can be.
1. Data Breaches are Expensive for Everyone Involved
Verizon’s report found that there were 79,970 security incidents last year with 2,122 data breaches. Some of these breaches resulted in the stealing of information like credit card numbers while others involved the loss of passwords and contact information. The estimated cost of a data breach comes out to about $400 million dollars from 700 million compromised records with an average loss of $52,000-87,000 dollars per 1,000 lost records. Target, the victim of a data breach in late-2013 recently settled with MasterCard for $19 million dollarsafter their breach resulted in the loss of 110 million credit card records and 40 million credit card numbers, with no one yet to be charged.
2. Timing is Becoming Better
Data breaches early on were a nightmare for everyone with some companies not reporting news of a breach until months after it had already occurred. Though 60% of attackers are able to compromise a system within minutes, the discovery time from the enterprise side of these attacks is shortening from days to mere hours.
3. Threats are Both External and Internal
The general understanding is that threats are external, with highly publicized attacks from Apple and Sony being pointed at international hackers. However, there are internal cybersecurity hacks as well, with Verizon reporting insider misuse to be 10.6% of all breaches. 55% of the time, these breaches occur because of a rogue employee who has decided to abuse their privileges and internal access rights to some technologies.
4. Cyber Espionage is on the Rise
Government foray into cybersecurity was a concern in Verizon’s report. Cyber espionage ranked third, coming in at 18% of all total issues, showing that war is not only waged within the trenches, but also between the wires. Many of these attacks come in through email attachments and links, looking to steal state secrets, user credentials, and internal data.
5. Mobile is No Big Deal – Yet
Finally, data breaches have yet to make their way to mobile devices, despite mobile adoption being very popular. Of all the devices tested, only 0.03% of them were found to be infected with mobile exploits. Of the popular mobile operating systems, 96% of malware was targeted at Android devices, with 95% showing up for less than a month and 80% not lasting beyond a week. Mobile, at least for now, is a safe zone, but that could change very soon.
If you would like to read the 70-page report, check it out here. With differing cyber threats affecting us daily there is no telling which one might hit you next, so it’s always important to keep tabs on the latest threats. At myhosting.com, we are always committed to ensuring that our customers are apprised of any issues that might keep their technology from working.
Check back Thursday as we explore what myhosting.com can do to help you avoid data breaches for your website and hosting needs.
