Cybercriminals Continuing to Exploit Human Nature, Increasing Reliance on Ransomware, Study Finds

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Cybercriminals Continuing to Exploit Human Nature, Increasing Reliance on Ransomware, Study Finds

By CircleID Reporter
April 27, 2016, 5:01 pm PDT Views: 7,285 Add Comment

Cybercriminals are continuing to exploit human nature and relying on familiar attack patterns such as phishing, and increase their reliance on ransomware, where data is encrypted and a ransom is demanded, according to Verizon 2016 Data Breach Investigations Report released today. A particular area that has picked up dramatically over the prior year is phishing where the study has found an alarming 30 percent of phishing messages were opened—an increase from 23 percent in the 2015 report—and 13 percent of those clicked to open the malicious attachment or nefarious link.”

Adding to the list of human error are those caused by end users of an organization. ‘Miscellaneous errors’ have taken the No. 1 spot for security incidents in this year’s report. “These can include improper disposal of company information, misconfiguration of IT systems, and lost and stolen assets such as laptops and smartphones. In fact, 26 percent of these errors involve people mistakenly sending sensitive information to the wrong person.”

“You might say our findings boil down to one common theme—the human element,” said Bryan Sartin, executive director of global security services, Verizon Enterprise Solutions.

Number of phishing emails opened and clicked in first 24 hours and percent of opened emails that were clicked. Source: Verizon 2016 Data Breach Investigations Report

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By CircleID Reporter — CircleID’s internal staff reporting on news tips and developing stories. Do you have information the professional Internet community should be aware of? Contact us.
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