Ah, for the innocent days of yore when lost and stolen laptops were to blame for the largest percentage of breach types. No longer – hacking has taken over in a big way according to SC Magazine.
Hacking was responsible for 83 percent of the total reported exposed records in 2011 and a third of the total breaches, according to the year-end "Data Breach Intelligence" report from Risk Based Security, affiliated with the Open Security Foundation, which records security incidents.
368 million records were breached last year, the highest total ever, and the all-time tally stands at 1.3 billion. The previous high was 191 million records in 2009.
Of course, we had some massive breaches in 2011, including the Sony Playstation breach which compromised 77 million records by itself.
But as John wryly noted, just because hacking has dethroned lost and stolen laptops as the cause of data breaches, that is NO EXCUSE for not encrypting your laptops!
