Outsider Hacks Dominated 2011 Security Breaches

RSA CONFERENCE 2012 -- San Francisco -- More than 85% of the data breach incident response cases investigated by Verizon Business last year originated from a hack, and more than 90% of them came from the outside rather than via a malicious insider or business partner.

Tuesday, Verizon published a snapshot of data from its upcoming 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report, using data from its own caseload of some 90 of its 855 breach cases for last year.

"This is the first year that we worked more cases outside the U.S. than inside. That ratio has been building and it makes the case that this is not a U.S.-specific problem. All regions are having data breaches," said Wade Baker, director of research and intelligence at Verizon Enterprise Solutions.

At the top of the list of compromised industries again were retail, financial services, and hospitality. And a big factor in this year's cases was the rise in hacktivist-based attacks, according to Baker.

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