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Verizon Enterprise Solution's 10th annual Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) shows cyber-espionage as the most common type of attack in manufacturing, the public sector and education. In fact, of 2,000 breaches analyzed for the report, 300 of those were espionage related and started with phishing.
Some eye-opening highlights from the latest DBIR include: 51% of data breaches analyzed involved malware; 43% of the data breaches analyzed utilized phishing; and ransomware is the now fifth most common malware variety -- and up 50% from last year. (See Cyberespionage, Ransomware Top 2017 Verizon DBIR.)
In addition, Verizon reports that the number of small businesses being attacked is on the uptick because larger organizations are doing more to prevent attacks, according to Dave Hylender, senior network engineer at Verizon Enterprise Solutions , who spoke to Carol Wilson, editor at large for Light Reading. (See Verizon: Small Biz in Cybercrooks' Crosshairs.)
"This year for the first time we are seeing the majority of companies -- 61% -- are small businesses, with fewer than 1,000 employees," Hylender told Wilson. "We are seeing the shift away from the really large banks being the ones that were hit and really large retailers, bricks and mortar or online, [and] we are now seeing many more small organizations being attacked."
This year's DBIR also includes the definition of nine incident classification patterns and maps them against industry verticals -- something which the report authors say makes the report more actionable. Sections specific to each vertical (accommodation and food services, retail, manufacturing, etc.) discuss who targets each sector, how they do it and why in the hope that the sectors can benefit from data specific to them.
— Elizabeth Miller Coyne, Managing Editor, Light Reading
(Home page photo source: Verizon Enterprise Solutions)
