Ride the Lightning

The Verizon 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report is Out!

May 20, 2021

Everyone in cybersecurity awaits the results of each annual Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) – the new report (the 14^th annual report) was published on May 13 and may be downloaded here.

The DBIR analyzes 29,207 quality incidents, of which 5,258 were confirmed breaches.

Highlights:

• Phishing attacks increased by 11 percent, while attacks using ransomware rose by 6 percent
• 85 percent of breaches involved a human element, while over 80 percent of breaches were discovered by external parties
• Breach simulations found the median financial impact of a breach is $21,659, with 95 percent of incidents falling between $826 and $653,587
• Data showed that 61 percent of breaches involved credential data (95 percent of organizations suffering credential stuffing attacks had between 637 and 3.3 billion malicious login attempts through the year).

The report also highlighted the challenges facing businesses as they move more of their business functions to the cloud – with attacks on web applications representing 39% of all breaches.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on many of the security challenges organizations are currently facing,” said Tami Erwin, CEO, Verizon Business. “As the number of companies switching business-critical functions to the cloud increases, the potential threat to their operations may become more pronounced, as malicious actors look to exploit human vulnerabilities and leverage an increased dependency on digital infrastructures.”

Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., President, Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
3975 University Drive, Suite 225|Fairfax, VA 22030
Email:  Phone: 703-359-0700
Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
https://senseient.com
https://twitter.com/sharonnelsonesq
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharondnelson
https://amazon.com/author/sharonnelson