Breach Investigations Report Verizon 2008 Data, which analyzed data from 500 offenses in the past four years, including three of the largest ever reported offers some surprising and informative statistics.
- 73% of data breaches resulted from external sources
- 18% were caused by foreign
- 39% involved trading partners
- 30% involved more parts
- 66% of the data concerned the victim did not know about the system
- 75% of offenses were not discovered by the victim
- 87% were considered preventable by reasonable controls
- 62% were attributed to a significant human error
- 59% resulted against hackers and intrusions
- 31% of the embedded malicious code
- 22% exploited a vulnerability
- 15% were due to physical threats
Although the study of Verizon indicated that far fewer data breaches resulted from insider sources, where the culprit was an insider, size and consequences of the violation was significantly higher. The time it took to conduct an attack varied from minutes to hours, but it usually took months or years, organizations discovering the breach, and once they did they discover the breach have been slow to react. The average violation involved about 1.2 million records.
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