Stefan Mileschin

Verizon's latest annual report on data breach investigations shows that Web application attacks, cyber-espionage and point-of-sale intrusions were among the top IT security threats in 2013.

The financial Industry is the worst leaker of data with 465 breaches. However, the UK public sector suffered 175 such incidents, retail had 148 and accommodation dealt with 137 breaches.

The number of breaches attributed to cyber-espionage has been on the rise over the past few years and of course the biggest offender would be the US government.

Hacking, malware and social engineering remained the top threats associated with data breach incidents.

The use of stolen credentials, which Verizon classifies as hacking, was the leading threat action in 2013 and contributed to 422 breaches. It was followed by malware-based data exfiltration, phishing, the use of RAM scrapers and use of backdoors.

All up, the report covers 1,367 confirmed data breaches, and 63,437 security incidents that put the integrity, confidentiality or availability of information assets at risk.

Organizations have slightly improved the speed at which they are able to detect breaches, but attackers are getting faster at compromising their targets.

http://news.techeye.net/business/top...n-2013-counted