It’s been a few weeks since Verizon released the 12th edition of its Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR). For this publication, Verizon’s researchers studied 41,686 security incidents in which a response was necessary. These analysts found that 2,013 of those incidents were data breaches in that some sort of information was actually compromised.

Those interested in how data breaches occur should be familiar with the general topography of the Internet. In our previous piece, we discussed the difference between the surface web, deep web and dark web. Most estimates about the topography of the Internet conclude that the deep web makes up between 95%-99% of all web sites. The dark web likely comprises less than 1%, while the surface web accounts for only a few percentage points itself. Nearly the entire Internet is the deep web.

In May 2019, Verizon Enterprise released the 12th edition of its Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR). Researchers analyzed a total of 41,686 security incidents, of which there were 2,013 data breaches, for the publication. More than half (52 percent) of those reported breaches involved some form of hacking. The report listed the most prominent hacking variety and vector combinations, with “vulnerability exploitation” making the top three.

Since GDPR came into effect, people tend to be a lot more aware of their personal data or rather, data breaches containing their personal data. Most data breaches that appear on the news tend to be what I call ‘big boy breaches’. These refer to massive breaches from the big companies consisting of millions and millions of data records.

When you hear about a data breach in the news, it’s usually related to a major company or social media network that has been targeted. The erroneous conclusion would be that the hackers only focus on exploiting security flaws in large organizations, but the opposite is true.

A data breach remains a common headline in the news cycle. A different company, website or social network reports a security issue almost daily. If it feels like using the internet has become a risky endeavor, the feeling is accurate. But what exactly classifies an event as a data breach? The world wide web is littered with different security gaps and vulnerabilities. But that doesn’t mean they have been exposed or attacked yet.

Higher education finds itself facing a threat to its financial security even larger than student retention – data breaches. As colleges and universities begin to adopt mobile technologies, they also find themselves increasingly targeted by malicious actors. Understanding the recent security breaches impacting the industry can educate institutions about information security.

With more colleges and universities incorporating Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms to enable registrars, admissions, and financial aid offices, they are collecting more electronic student information. Couple that with weak networks and systems, and the state of cybersecurity in higher education earns an F. To remain solvent in an era of continued student recidivism, higher education needs to focus more efforts on protecting this information from cybercriminals.

Having covered the start-up vs corporate question before, we thought we would look into which industry is currently most at risk of cyber attack. According to the Wikipedia entry ‘list of data breaches’, which contains a list of data breaches (spoilers), out of 255 data breaches over the last 15 years, historically, the hardest hit industry was ‘web’.

With over 80 million players globally, Fortnite stands out as an undisputed champion when it comes to online gaming. Fortnite has been developed by Epic Games, an American game developer. However, it seems that the same cannot be said for Epic Games when it comes to security and protection of user data. Fortnite accounts for around 50% of Epic Games’ estimated value of $8.5 billion.