Verizon recently released its highly anticipated 13th annual Data Breach Investigations Report (“DBIR”), containing a comprehensive data-driven review and analysis of the past year’s major cybersecurity events. As a leader in the field of cybersecurity services and incident response, bit-x-bit is pleased to have contributed to the DBIR again this year.  We are sharing the DBIR with our clients, as it contains valuable security-related information that is likely to be relevant to many of your businesses.

The DBIR is the result of the analysis of more than 32,000 (anonymized) incidents, including 3,950 confirmed data breaches. Your organization can leverage this information to raise awareness and assist in identifying important security needs. We recommend that our clients utilize the DBIR to reflect on the methods commonly used by attackers, which can help organizations anticipate, mitigate, and remediate these threats.

Some important takeaways from the DBIR to consider:

  1. DBIR data continues to show that external actors are, and have always been, the most common source of attack. In fact, 70% of breaches this year were caused by outsiders. bit-x-bit has extensive experience in identifying how external bad actors compromise a corporate network and can help remediate those threats.
  2. 30% of breaches involved internal actors and 86% of breaches were financially motivated. bit-x-bit has successfully helped companies of all sizes respond to insider threats and uses state-of-the-art forensic investigative techniques to aid in ransomware attacks motivated by financial interest.
  3. Cloud assets were involved in about 24% of breaches this year, while on-premises assets are still 70% in the reported breaches dataset. bit-x-bit routinely manages data stored either on a client’s premises or on a cloud-based system or network.
  4. Over 80% of breaches within Hacking involve Brute force or the use of lost or stolen credentials.  bit-x-bit can help develop best practices for creating more complex, and secure, credentials.
  5. The number of confirmed breaches practically doubled from 2,013 in the 12th annual report to 3,950 in this report. As the world continues to dwell in uncertainty, we can help you prepare against attempts to compromise your company’s important data.

The full report is available on Verizon’s website at:  https://enterprise.verizon.com/resources/reports/2020-data-breach-investigations-report.pdf

For those that just want a quick “executive” peek, the executive summary is available here: https://enterprise.verizon.com/resources/executivebriefs/2020-dbir-executive-brief.pdf