It's not just politicians who are trembling in their boots about the threat of hackers. Any person or organization with anything of value is a likely target of increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks.
2016 was a record year for data breaches, according to a new report by the Identity Theft Resource Center and Cyberscout (formerly IDT911). Nationally, there were 1,093 data breaches, an increase of 40 percent over the previous annual record.
A narrow majority of data breaches are the result of hacking or phishing. One of the common strategies, referred to as "CEO spearphishing," involves an email impersonating a company official requesting a colleague to deliver sensitive information or transfer money.
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Sometimes, however, organizations disclose sensitive data on their own. Of all the breaches, 9 percent were classified as accidental email/internet exposure of information and nearly as many were the result of an employee error.
"With the click of a mouse by a naïve employee, companies lose control over their customer, employee and business data. In an age of an unprecedented threat, business leaders need to mitigate risk by developing C-suite strategies and plans for data breach prevention, protection and resolution," says Matt Cullina, CEO of CyberScout.
Businesses are the top target for targets for data thieves. Nearly half of the reported data breaches — 494 — hit companies. The health care sector also took a big hit from hackers, however, with 377 data breaches.
Hospitals suffered a number of notable attacks in 2016, including from hackers who deployed "ransomware" that infiltrated computer systems and demanded ransoms to leave. Some hospitals say they have solved the problem without paying the ransom, but in one prominent incident, a major Los Angeles hospital opted to pay a $17,000 ransom to resolve the issue quickly.
Cybersecurity experts have raised alarms about the lack of preparedness among health care providers, many of which only recently digitized health records that used to be paper-based. Health files offer much greater profit potential to hackers than many other types of data that is directly tied to finance, such as credit card numbers, because it provides all kinds of personal information hackers can use to steal identities.
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