Earlier this week, Verizon released its annual Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) for 2015. In the DBIR, Verizon, along with about 70 contributing organizations, presents an extensive survey and analysis of patterns and lessons from significant data breaches over the prior year. While the 2015 DBIR offers a broad range of data breach information, among the notable trends observed are the following:

• 90% of breaches are attributable to miscellaneous errors (29.4%), crimeware (25.1%), insider misuse (20.6%), and lost or stolen devices (15.3%)
• Among miscellaneous errors, cases of misdelivery and inadvertent posting or publishing of data made up almost half of those errors
• The Healthcare, Administrative and Educational sectors were most affected by miscellaneous errors
• POS attacks were most common in the Accommodation, Entertainment, and Retail sectors
• Manufacturing and Professional Services are the sectors most plagued by cyber-espionage
• Expected average breach losses ranged from a low of $67,500 where only about 1,000 records were involved to around $1.25 million in situations affecting 1 million records, with corresponding variations provided for smaller and larger breaches

A copy of the full Data Breach Investigation Report can be accessed here.

For more information on Data Breach Investigations Reports, contact your Cybersecurity and Data Privacy counsel at Smith, Gambrell & Russell.