Profit trumps espionage as top motivator in cyber attacks: Report
20 May, 2020
Money trumped spying as the top motivator for data breaches this past year, according to Verizon’s gross annual report on cyber crimes published on Tuesday.
About nine out of 10 breaches were financially motivated, predicated on an examination of more than 32,000 incidents and nearly 4,000 confirmed break-ins in 81 countries, the report said.
Verizon Business 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report discovered that confirmed data breaches doubled from the last year. As the coronavirus pandemic has forced persons indoors, cyber attacks on businesses are expected to climb.
The report found that 86 percent of breaches were for money, not for purposes of spying. Credential theft, phishing and compromising business emails caused 67 percent of the cyber attacks.
As more businesses moved to web-based solutions, so did hackers. In line with the report, breaches on web and cloud applications rose to 43 percent, double the prior year.
Companies like Facebook Inc and Salesforce have extended working remotely to at least all of those other year, with an increase of businesses likely to follow suit. Verizon Business Group CEO Tami Erwin said the “digital transformation” to the work-from-home model through the coronavirus pandemic has presented several security red flags.
“A lot of folks ended up sending employees to work from home without really thinking through what were a few of the security elements later on,” Erwin told Reuters. “I think employees working at home are probably more susceptible to attacks.”
Erwin said businesses can protect themselves from cyber attacks by keeping employees educated on phishing and other fraudulent tactics to access sensitive information.
Source: www.thejakartapost.com
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