Mary-Louise Hoffman
A Verizon study has revealed that a majority of data breaches and security incidents in the public sector during 2015 were caused by lost or stolen devices, misuse of privileged user accounts, unintentional employee actions and crimeware.
Verizon analyzed more than 100,000 security incidents and 2,260 breaches across multiple industries in 82 countries for its annual Data Breach Investigations Report.
The report is meant to help organizations gain insight into the top IT threats facing the sectors they belong in and identify strategies to address security risks, the company noted.
The company found that mistakes that compromise security, loss or theft of physical devices and sensitive data misuse by insiders accounted for about 66 percent of incidents at government organizations studied.
The study also offers information on incident patterns in the accommodation, administrative, educational, entertainment, finance, healthcare, information, manufacturing, professional, retail and transportation sectors.
