IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - Cover4

the data

By Prachi Patel-Predd

Data Breaches

w

illie sutton famously
said that he robbed
banks because that's
where the money was. You might
think that today's thieves would
do the same, possibly by hacking
into atm machines. Yet it turns
out that financial services account
for only 14 percent of data

Deceit 10%

20

Physical 15%

30

Misuse 22%

Percent

40

Malcode 31%

50

Hacking 59%

60

10

Environmental 0.4%

Errors directly leading (3%) and
contributing (62%) to breaches

tHreat categorIes

0

breaches, while 20 percent are in
the food and beverage industry.
that's just one surprising
statistic in a new global study
of some 500 security breaches
handled by Verizon Business's risK
team between 2004 and 2007,
involving more than 230 million
data records. Verizon's report sorts
attacks into seven categories.
hacking is, unsurprisingly, a cybercriminal's favorite weapon. errors,
such as incorrect network settings,
directly led to just 3 percent of the
breaches, but by giving bad guys a
leg up they ended up contributing
to many more.
in a disturbing trend, in the
study's first year only 8 percent
of all attacks involved partner
organizations, such as vendors
and customers, but by 2007
fully 44 percent did. twenty-four
percent of all attacks originating
outside an organization came from
iP addresses in eastern europe.
such addresses can't always lead
to a particular attacker's exact
location, but some clear patterns
emerge. For example, attacks
on point-of-sale systems were
frequently traced back to eastern
europe and russia, while web
graffiti and other defacements
often originated in the middle east.
the full report is available at
http://www.verizonbusiness.com/
resources/security/databreach
report.pdf.
o

73
Percentage of attacks implicating business partners ...... 39
Percentage of attacks from internal sources ........................... 18

IndustrIes represented
Education 3%

Financial
services
14%

187 500

median number of records
compromised from internal threats ................

375 000
Percentage of internal attacks by it admin............................ 50

Technology
services
13%

Government 2%
Manufacturing 5%

Hospitality 2%

Breakdown of HackIng

Unknown
vulnerability
5%

Back door
15%

Known
vulnerability
18%

Application and
service layer
39%

Operating
systems/
platform layer
23%

LocatIon of attackIng Ips
Middle East 5%
Western & Southern
Europe 9%

Africa 1%

North
America
23%

30 000

median number of records
compromised from partner attacks ....................

Retail
35%

Food &
beverage
20%

Percentage of attacks from outside an organization.........

median number of records compromised
from external attacks ....................................................

Other 3%

Entertainment 3%

For more
on insider
cyberattacks,
see "When Friend
Is Foe" at http://
spectrum.ieee.
org/sep08/
moredatainfo.

Eastern
Europe
24%

South
America
3%

East Asia
12%
South &
Southeast
Asia
14%
Northern & Central
Asia 9%

Source: "2008 Data breach investigations report." Verizon business riSK team

72

NA * iEEE SpEctrum * SEptEmbEr 2008

www.sPectrum.ieee.org
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum September, 2008
