Compromised records on the rise, IBM discovers

The number of compromised records increased from 600 million to more than 4 billion during 2016, according to IBM Security.

The 2017 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index comprises observations from more than 8000 monitored security clients in 100 countries, as well as data derived from assets such as spam sensors and honeynets.

These leaked records include data that cybercriminals have traditionally targeted, such as credit cards, passwords and personal information, but a number of significant breaches also related to unstructured data such as email archives, business documents, intellectual property and source code.

“Cybercriminals continued to innovate in 2016 as we saw techniques like ransomware move from a nuisance to an epidemic,” said Caleb Barlow, vice president of threat intelligence, IBM Security.

“While the volume of records compromised last year reached historic highs, we see this shift to unstructured data as a seminal moment. The value of structured data to cybercriminals is beginning to wane as the supply outstrips the demand. Unstructured data is big-game hunting for hackers and we expect to see them monetise it this year in new ways.”

In a separate study last year, IBM Security found 70% of businesses impacted by ransomware paid over $10,000 to regain access to business data and systems. In the first three months of 2016, the FBI estimated cybercriminals were paid a reported $209 million via ransomware. This would put criminals on pace to make nearly $1 billion from their use of the malware.

The primary delivery method for ransomware is via malicious attachments in spam emails. This fuelled a 400% increase in spam year over year, with roughly 44% of spam containing malicious attachments. Ransomware made up 85% of those malicious attachments in 2016.

In 2015 health care was the most attacked industry, with financial services falling to third; however, attackers in 2016 refocused back on financial services. The lower success rate versus the high volume of attacks in financial services indicates that continued investment in sustained security practices likely helped protect financial institutions.

The healthcare industry continued to be beleaguered by a high number of incidents, although attackers focused on smaller targets, resulting in a lower number of leaked records. In 2016 only 12 million records were compromised in health care, keeping it out of the top five most-breached industries.

Information and communication services companies and government experienced the highest number of incidents and records breached in 2016.

The average IBM-monitored security client organisation experienced more than 54 million security events in 2016 — only 3% more events than 2015. This was marked by a 12% decrease year over year in attacks. As security systems are further tuned and new innovations like cognitive systems grow, the number of incidents overall dropped 48% in 2016.

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