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When many people think about data breaches, they call to mind images of hackers in some European country behind a series of state-of-the-art computers that are out to do a business harm. What they usually don't think about is the internal misuse of information. Despite this, that very issue is something virtually every business faces on a daily basis whether they know it or not. Out of all of the industries that are most affected by the internal misuse of information, there are three in particular that you'll need to know more about.
Public
Every year, Verizon publishes a Data Breach Investigations Report that looks at thousands upon thousands of confirmed data breaches across the globe. Out of the 80,000 different "incidents" that were analyzed in the 2015 version of the report, an incredible 50,000 of them came from the public sector. According to a separate report that was conducted by Forrester, almost 36% of all data breaches stem from employees misusing internal information accidentally. Because of this, you can infer that an estimated 18,000 of the data breaches that struck the public sector were the result of one or more employees unintentionally misusing the mission-critical information they need to do their jobs each day.
Healthcare
Part of the reason why healthcare is such a prime target for the internal misuse of information has to do with the value of this data on illicit channels. Healthcare information is ten times as valuable on the black market as a credit card number, which can sometimes create a situation that is far too financially enticing for people to ignore. When you take this issue and couple it with the fact that cyber security in healthcare is woefully inadequate when compared to other industries, you arrive at a "perfect storm" of bad qualities that is essentially just a powder keg waiting to explode. This is evident in the multi-million dollar hacks that have already struck some of the leading healthcare companies due in part to the internal misuse of information in the last few years alone, like Anthem.
Financial Services
According to Verizon's report, almost 650 of the incidents in 2015 struck the financial services industry in some capacity. Nearly 300 of those incidents lead to a confirmed instance of data loss, meaning that hackers or other people with malicious intentions walked away with some type of sensitive information. Even though the use of technology like phishing attacks and RAM scrapers are top culprits, the biggest threat is and will likely remain the internal misuse of information. As the security experts at Calyptix Security so eloquently state, "nothing beats being able to unlock the front door."
These numbers just go to show you that it isn't just huge corporations doing international business that need to worry about digital threats. Virtually any type of business, both public and private, that operates in the digital world can and probably will fall victim to this type of incident at some point in the near future. Both the intentional and unintentional misuse of information are top culprits for these situations and are a problem that should be addressed at all costs moving forward.
