The Week in Breach: Every industry is at risk for cybercrime, but is YOUR business more at risk?

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Are You Prepared for Unexpected Risk Modifiers?

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Cybersecurity isn’t a one size fits all proposition. Every organization has unique needs based on the way that they do business. In addition, those needs can be impacted by the prospect of third party and supply chain risk creating complications that must be addressed. Plus regulations regarding compliance, industry standards, legal requirements, general threat intelligence, workforce makeup and a host of other issues can impact the security calculus for companies. Not to mention the value of your data or potential profitability as a ransomware target. But are you certain that you’re taking every risk factor into account when determining the right way forward? There are also a few unexpected variables that add risk modifiers, presenting security obstacles that businesses need to overcome – and they can with a little expert help.

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INDUSTRY VARIABLES

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Every industry is at risk for cybercrime, but some are just a little bit more imperiled than others. A special focus or added stressor on an industry can cause threat to surge and recede fast as cybercriminals look for ways to maximize their profits. For example, risk increased dramatically for drug companies, laboratories, hospitals and other medical targets in turn during the initial COVID-19 pandemic and race for the vaccine. By the end of that road, even cold storage and transport companies had a turn in the spotlight. some industries are simply more likely targets for cybercrime, and that’s something that needs to be a focus for security planning.

Using the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, we gathered data on the 10 most common industries to experience a data breach in 2020 and then broke that down by company size to illustrate how industry variables can impact an organization’s cybersecurity needs.

Industry​	Total breaches​	1 – 1000​	1000+​	unknown​
Public​	885​	13​	30​	842​
Professional​	630​	76 ​	121​	433​
Healthcare  ​	472​	32​	19 ​	421​
Finance ​	467 ​	26 ​	14 ​	427​
Information   ​	381 ​	35​	21 ​	325​
Education   ​	344​	17 ​	13  ​	314​
Mining   ​	335 ​	2 ​	3 ​	330​
Manufacturing ​	270​	13​	27​	230​
Retail	165​	10​	19 ​	136​
Entertainment  ​	109​	6​	1​	102​

LOCATION VARIABLES

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Can a company’s geographic location impact its threat landscape? Yes. Geography is especially likely to impact the motivations of potential threat actors whether they’re internal or external. In these scenarios, we focused on malicious threats to organizations (the top non-malicious threat to cybersecurity is eternally human error). Using data drawn from the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, we plotted out the variables that can impact cybersecurity for companies including what types of data attackers want the most in three major regions.

APAC

• Incidents Examined: 5,255 incidents, 1,495 with confirmed data disclosure ​
• Top Threats: Social Engineering, Basic Web Application Attacks and Miscellaneous Errors represent 98% of breaches ​
• Types of Threat Actors: External (95%), Internal (6%)
• Threat Actor Motives: Financial (96%), Espionage (3%), Fun/Personal (1%)
• Most Commonly Stolen Data: Credentials (96%), Personal (3%), Other (2%), Corporate Secrets (1%) ​

EMEA

• Incidents Examined: 5,379 incidents, 293 with confirmed data disclosure ​
• Top Threats: Basic Web Application Attacks, System Intrusion and Social Engineering patterns represent 83% of breaches ​
• Types of Threat Actors: External (83%), Internal (18%) ​
• Threat Actor Motives: Financial (89%), Espionage (8%), Fun/Personal (1%), Grudge (1%)
• Most Commonly Stolen Data: Credentials (70%), Corporate/Business Internal (52%), Personal (22%), Other (16%)​

North America (US & Canada)

• Incidents Examined: 13,256 incidents, 1,080 with confirmed data disclosure ​
• Top Threats: Social Engineering, System Intrusion and Basic Web Application Attacks represent 92% of breaches ​
• Types of Threat Actors: External (82%), Internal (19%), Multiple (2%), Partner (1%)  ​
• Threat Actor Motives: Financial (96%), Espionage (3%), Grudge (2%), Fun/Personal (1%)
• Most Commonly Stolen Data: Credentials (58%), Personal (34%), Other (27%), Internal (11%) ​

Regional differences have a noticeable impact on the threat landscape in different parts of the world. Social engineering continues to be a leader, emerging as the top general threat category faced by companies in North America, Asia and Australia, but for European firms, social engineering clocks in third and the top threat type is actually web application attacks. In North America and the Asia Pacific region including Australia, 96% of the bad actors involved in data breach incidents are looking for just one thing: money. While that is still the largest motivator for bad actors in Europe, that figure drops to 89%. Interestingly, a grudge against the company is the motive behind 2% of the actions of threat actors in data breaches in North America and Europe, but it doesn’t even make the list in Asia.

As an added bonus, We thought you’d enjoy seeing what the top actions were in all the threats that were in the pool for consideration. It’s not a list that packs great surprises. Every one of these actions packs a punch that can send businesses reeling. There may be more than one action that leads to a breach, a fact reflected in the percentages quoted here. This information is also culled from the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report.

Top Action Types

1. Phishing (social engineering)                                         40%​
2. Use of stolen credentials (hacking)                                30%​
3. Ransomware (malware)                                                  30%​
4. Misconfiguration (error)                                                 20%​
5. Brute force (hacking)                                                    >10%

Cybercriminals Are Subject to Location Variables Too

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Regional threat probabilities aren’t a one-way street. The industry that a business is in can dramatically impact its risk for phishing. In a recent study on the geographic factors in phishing-based cybercrime conducted by Columbia University, researchers were able to pinpoint the most likely locales in which phishing emails originate. The countries that generate a higher volume of phishing emails (more than 1,000 emails in the dataset) are clustered in just a few regions.

However, some countries had a much higher probability of being the birthplace of a phishing message. Email that had a higher probability of phishing originated from these locales (in descending order):

• Lithuania
• Latvia
• Serbia
• Ukraine
• Russia
• Bahamas
• Puerto Rico
• Colombia
• Iran
• Palestine
• Kazakhstan

Very few of the emails that the researchers studied originated in the United States or Canada. The study cited an example that showed that even though 129,369 phishing emails in the dataset were sent from the US, there’s still only a 0.02% probability of receiving a phishing email sent from the US or Canada. The researchers also noted that Great Britain and most of the EU were also unlikely points of origin for phishing messages. Worldwide, most countries had a phishing origin probability of 10% or less.  Further illustrating the necessity of security awareness training that emphasizes phishing resistance, an estimated 1 in 99 emails that a business receives are phishing messages.

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How Can You Use This Data to Sell More Security?

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Data like this is valuable for several reasons. When planning a cybersecurity strategy, this data can help make sure that unique risks like an abundance of social engineering threats delivered via phishing are figured into the equation in order to tailor defensive measures appropriately and allocate funds accurately. This information is useful when considering a security overhaul, an incident response plan or changes to a security stack. It’s also a great way to start conversations around security and the need for security adjustments while making that need relatable and easy to quantify. Plus, having this knowledge at hand is a great way to boost client and prospect confidence in your expertise.

Put Protection in Place That Never Varies for a Strong Universal Defense

• Multifactor authentication (MFA)  stops 99% of password-based cybercrime and teamed up with single sign-on (SSO), this dynamic duo provides strong access control.
• Simple remote management and secure shared password vaults make it easy for IT teams to respond quickly in an emergency to isolate a compromised account.
• Automated password resets eliminate the constant wave of reset tickets, saving time, money and stress.

• We’re here to help if you would like to learn more about ways that you can protect your business and from today’s nastiest cybersecurity nightmares. Let’s get together and talk about it:  SCHEDULE A CONSULTATION>>

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Dark Web ID’s Top Threats This Week

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1 – 1.5 = Extreme Risk

1.51 – 2.49 = Severe Risk

2.5 – 3 = Moderate Risk

Risk scores for The Week in Breach are calculated using a formula that considers a wide range of factors related to the assessed breach.