68% of Data Breaches in 2016 were by Malicious Outsiders

As reported in Technology Decisions, 68% of all reported data breaches in 2016 were linked to malicious outsiders.  And the volume of records exposed by those outsiders surged by 286% over 2015 volume, according to the Breach Level Index published by Gemalto.

The report was released a few months ago, but trawling back over the data it’s worthy to note just how frequently breaches are occurring.  3,156 records were breached every minute of every day  (and that’s only the ones that were reported).

With Mandatory Data Breach Notification for Australia now just a matter of months away, it’s a timely reminder to act now to secure your data.

Gemalto have a novel take on the issue.  Their data reports that only 4% of breaches were secure breaches.  i.e. the data that was stolen was encrypted, meaning it was useless to the malicious actors.

They’ve produced a video called “Secure the Breach” that talks about a change of mindset from securing the channels by which a breach might occur to securing the data that might be exposed.

It’s worth considering, but in the meantime, enforce a password change policy on your users.  Given that around 750 million records that were breached were the result of unauthorised account access, it’s one of the most simple and immediately effective things you can do.

When we on-board a client as part of our managed it services, it’s typically one of the first things we do.