A Fourth of Data Breaches Attributed to Human Error

There were 954 total data breach notifications under the Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme in one year, according to the NDB Scheme 12-Month Insights Report.

There was a 712 percent increase in notifications since the introduction of the NDB scheme. The NDB scheme came into effect in the 30th year of operation of the Privacy Act. Along with the Privacy (Australian Government Agencies—Governance) APP Code 2017 (also introduced in 2018), the NDB scheme was a significant reform, providing greater transparency and accountability for personal information handling in Australia.

Key findings include:

60 percent of data breaches were malicious or criminal acts.
153 number of breaches were attributed to phishing and spear phishing.
28 percent of cyber attacks were incidents where credentials were obtained by unknown means.
83 percent of data breaches affected fewer than 1,000 people.
25 percent of data breach notifications were attributed to human error.
55 percent of health sector data breaches were due to human error.
41 percent of the finance sector data breaches were due to human errors.
86 percent of notifications involved contact information disclosure.

In today's rapidly evolving security landscape, organizations face an ever-growing array of disruptive events, security threats and risks. Traditional reactive approaches to security intelligence often leave businesses vulnerable and ill-prepared to anticipate and mitigate emerging threats that could impact the safety of their people, facilities or operations.

ON DEMAND: Apple Mac computer use is growing in the corporate space. Having the solutions and the knowledge base to respond to events that include Mac computers is just as important as their Windows counterparts.