Looking for an edge against cybercrime? Today’s cybercriminals are unleashing havoc on businesses around the globe, through complex, socially engineered attacks that have just one goal in mind: stealing your data. They’re getting very good at it too; data breach numbers have been rising steadily. New data breaches are happening daily, and they’re not just profitable for the bad actors who sell that stolen data. They’re also gateways to future attacks by adding to the massive pool of information including billions of passwords on the dark web that fuels operations like ransomware, business email compromise, spear phishing, and more hacking. If you’re worried about protecting your company’s credentials and data, these 10 cybersecurity statistics paired with 10 important facts about data breaches pulled from Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report 2021 can give you an edge in planning an effective strategy to keep your data safely inside your business and away from cybercriminals.

These 10 Cybersecurity Statistics Can Help You Understand Your Data Breach Risk

• 36% of organizations surveyed suffered a serious data security incident like cloud data breach in the past 12 months
• 74% of IT managers said that their companies had been successfully phished in the last year
• 80% of companies have faced an increase in the number of phishing attacks they face in 2021
• Insider threat risk rose about 40% in 2020, tripling in the last three years
•  75% of organizations in the United States were hit by a phishing attack that resulted in a data breach in 2020
• Malicious insider actions are responsible for almost 25% of confirmed breaches
•  60% of companies go out of business within six months of experiencing a cyberattack
•  90% of incidents that end in a data breach start with a phishing email
•  42% of organizations have been compromised because of a bad, stolen, or cracked password
• 90% of data breaches are caused by human error

Cybersecurity Statistics About the Primary Causes of Cloud Data Breaches

The IT professionals surveyed in The State of Cloud Security 2021 had plenty of targets in mind as the influences that cause a cloud data breach. Spoiler alert: none of them are cybercriminal hackers.

• 32% say too many APIs and interfaces to govern  
• 31% cite lack of adequate controls and database oversight 
• 27% point to lack of policy awareness around data security
• 23% blamed old-fashioned negligence   
• 21% said they are not checking Infrastructure as Code (IaC) prior to deployment 
• 20% admitted that their IT team oversight is at fault 

Source: ID Agent