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:
- Eighty-five percent of successful data breaches involved defrauding humans, rather than exploiting flaws in computer code.
- Most data breaches are caused by external actors (61 percent), compared to internal actors like employee mishaps (39 percent).
- Basic human error continues to afflict the healthcare sector. The most common type of error is misdelivery, which makes up 36 percent.
- 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).
- The top type of data breached is personal (66 percent), followed by medical data (55 percent), credentials (32 percent) and other (20 percent).