85% of data breaches caused by defrauding humans, not exploiting software

Most data breaches don't occur because of searching for software vulnerabilities. Instead, they start with tricking humans into opening malicious links, among other schemes, according to a recent report published by Verizon.

There were 655 confirmed data incidents and 472 confirmed data breaches in the healthcare industry analyzed for this report.

Five report findings:

  1. Eighty-five percent of successful data breaches involved defrauding humans, rather than exploiting flaws in computer code.

  2. Most data breaches are caused by external actors (61 percent), compared to internal actors like employee mishaps (39 percent).

  3. Basic human error continues to afflict the healthcare sector. The most common type of error is misdelivery, which makes up 36 percent.

  4. Most healthcare data breaches are for financial gain (91 percent), followed by fun (5 percent), espionage (4 percent) and a grudge against the company (1 percent).

  5. The top type of data breached is personal (66 percent), followed by medical data (55 percent), credentials (32 percent) and other (20 percent).

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