Analysis of cyber attack and incident data from IBM's worldwide security operations attributes 95 percent of IT security breaches to human error.
Analysis of cyber attack and incident data from IBM's worldwide security operations attributes 95 percent of IT security breaches to human error.Human error has a well-documented account of generating data breaches. In 2014, security researchers at IBM reported that 95 percent of hack attacks or incidents were human error. The security index focused on around 1,000 of IBM's clients spread around the globe in 133 countries. The generally recorded form of human errors includes system misconfiguration, poor patch management, default user names, disclosure of regulated information, passwords or easy-to-guess passwords, and lost laptops or mobile devices via the use of an incorrect email address. The most prevalent contributing human error was double-clicking on an infected attachment or unsafe URL.
CybSafe, the cybersecurity awareness and data analytics company's review of the data from the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), said human error caused approximately 90 percent of data breaches in 2019. Nine out of ten of the 2376 cyber-breaches reported to the ICO in 2019 were caused by end-users' mistakes.CybSafe found that phishing was the leading cause of the 2019 breaches. Unauthorized access was the second most common cause of cyber violations, with 791 breaches reported to the ICO. Some other reasons were malware or ransomware, hardware/software misconfiguration, and brute force password attacks.
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