2008 Data Breach Analysis – By Attack

When reviewing the 2008 Privacy Rights Clearinghouse’s data breach statistics we broke down the type of attack into five categories: Dishonest Insider, Hacker, Lost/Stolen Computer Equipment, Improper Storage/Disposal of Documents and Dumb Exposure. While the first four are fairly selfexplanatory, Dumb Exposure is when someone posted information they should not have, sent a file to a wrong person, didn’t seal the envelopes prior to mailing, etc.

Dishonest Insider: 7.1% of total attacks
Hacker: 22.3%
Lost Computer Equipment: 35.2%
Improper Storage/Disposal of Documents: 10.3%
Dumb Exposure: 25.2%

The Quick Fix

The following suggestions are made to help business owners know where to start adding security.

Dishonest Insider: Employee Education
Hacker: Network security and password management
Lost Computer Equipment: Password management and data file encryption
Improper Storage/Disposal of Documents: Employee training and paper shredder
Dumb Exposure: Employee training

Please review some of our other blogs to learn what our security experts have to say on these subjects. If you have a specific question, please ask our experts by clicking the ” Have a Question? ” link.