Verizon 2020 Data Breach Report: Money Still Makes the Cyber-Crime World Go Round
The Verizon Business 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report (2020 DBIR) shows that financial gain remains the key driver for cybercrime with nearly nine in 10 (86 percent) breaches investigated financially-driven. The vast majority of breaches continue to be caused by external actors - 70 percent - with organized crime accounting for 55 percent of these. Credential theft and social attacks such as phishing and business email compromises cause the majority of breaches (over 67 percent), and specifically:
The 2020 DBIR also highlighted a year-over-year two-fold increase in web application breaches, to 43 percent, and stolen credentials were used in more than 80 percent of the cases - a worrying trend as business-critical workflows continue to move to the cloud. Ransomware also saw a slight increase, found in 27 percent of malware incidents (compared to 24 percent in 2019 DBIR); 18 percent of organizations reported blocking at least one piece of ransomware last year.