Identity Theft News

Cybercriminals target PINs in data breaches

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

The financial sector accounted for 93 percent of business data breaches last year, while groups identified by law enforcement as engaged in organized crime were responsible for 90 percent of the compromised records, according to a new report.

Verizon Business today released its findings from its study of 285 million compromised records from 90 confirmed breaches in 2008. The report concluded that mistakes and oversight failures, more than a lack of resources, were responsible for a majority of breaches, Verizon Business said.

"The compromise of sensitive information increased dramatically in 2008, and it's past time to be vigilant about enterprise security," said Peter Tippett, vice president of research and intelligence for Verizon Business Security Solutions.

Despite beliefs that PCs and mobile devices are more vulnerable to cyberattacks, the report found that 99 percent of all breached records were compromised by from servers and applications, Verizon said.

Cybercriminals were evolving their attacks on financial records related to personal identification numbers and Verizon said 2008 saw an explosion of attacks on PIN data.

A staggering 81 percent of affected organizations subject to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard had been found non-compliant prior to being breached the report found.