Report: Employee errors cause of most data breaches

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – Beazley, which specializes in breach response insurance, has found that the two most common sources of breaches are unintended disclosure, such as misdirected emails and faxes, along with the physical loss of paper records.
Beazley analyzed more than 1,500 data breaches in 2013 and 2014 to determine that unintended disclosure accounted for 31 percent of breaches, and losing paper records, 24 percent. The latter is particularly prevalent among health care organizations, Beazley said.
Malware or spyware represented 11 percent of breaches, but these have been increasing, Beazley said.
Because of the money spent to discover how these breaches happened, they cost on average 4.5 percent more than breaches caused by unintended disclosure.
The number of individuals affected by the data breaches Beazley has handled now exceeds 14 million.
“The majority of data breaches are avoidable with appropriate training
and security measures in place,” said Katherine Keefe, head of
Beazley breach response services, noting the need for encryption services for both large-scale computer networks and mobile services as a cornerstone of cloud security.
To avoid a potential data breach, Beazley also recommends staying on top of the latest available software patches and moving to automated patch management, enforcing password complexity, being alert to phishing scams and double checking before hitting send. Beazley provides breach response services to a range of sectors, with healthcare being the largest, followed by higher education and financial services.
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