Crime And Data Intrusion Go Hand In Hand

The theft of information happens each and every day. How it happens can be broken down into different categories. Some of these occurrences happen behind the scenes while others take place right in front of you. Verizon recently compiled research detailing the acts of hacking, the misuse of users access privileges, and malware were the three highest methods used to steal information. Organized crime rings and cyber criminals came in at eighty five percent of the amount of information stolen in the year 2009. Incidence of access that were unauthorized occurred at a rate of thirty eight percent because credentials to login to a system were stolen. Seventy percent of data intrusions occurred through the use of individuals external to an infrastructure, while insiders are responsible for fifty percent of the breaches. Actual business partners were responsible for approximately eleven percent.

The research and information used statistics and various investigations that were put together by the United States Secret Service and by Verizon. One hundred forty one particular incidents that involved a figure greater than one hundred forty three million information records that were compromised were used to complete the study. In the year 2008 the number of compromised records had reached three hundred sixty million. This study shows that the majority of breaches that came from an external source or from the countries of North America, Eastern Europe, and eastern part of Asia. Concerning the breaches fifty percent of them happened because of user privileges that were misused. Breaches due to hacking came in at forty percent while the use of malware was rated at thirty eight percent. Social engineering, a method used to personally derive information from another individual, was ranked at twenty percent and hacking attacks of a physical nature was ranked at fifteen percent.

None of the breaches used an exploit of a vulnerability that could have been patched. This means the usual hacking procedures including the backdoor method, SQL injections, or personal credentials that were stolen, take advantage of situations and environments that can't be patched in a very easy manner. Wade Baker, who works for Verizon as their director of risk intelligence, said, “Hackers do not spend a lot of time finding software holes in software. It is far easier to find misconfigurations that give them access.”

As a staggering amount, ninety six percent of the intrusions could have been avoided by using very simple control methods, while eighty percent of those who fall under the guidelines of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard did not follow the issues of compliance. Including the information gleaned by the Secret Service, the investigations of data breach compiled by Verizon covered a time span of six years, included over nine hundred security intrusions and a number of compromised records greater than nine hundred million. Falling in line with these figures, a report compiled by the Ponemon Institute described the yearly cost and impact of cyber crime was approximately just under four million dollars per year.

CISSP online training helps organizations and users prevent the theft of information by explaining the many different methods an infrastructure can bring protected. K Alliance and their certified information security training program and online tutorials contain the various topics and issues you need in order to protect your critical data. Security risk management, environmental security, network security, cryptography, application development security, business continuity, and other important areas are contained in the training courses.

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