The report, titled 2017 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, includes insights from IBM researchers who observed and analyzed more than 8,000 monitored security clients in 100 countries. The researchers also monitored spam and phishing attacks on more than 37 billion web pages.
In 2016, breaches included traditional data targets like credit card, password and personal health information. However, IBM researchers also noticed a significant amount of breaches related to email archives, business documents, intellectual property and source code.
Here are three more insights from IBM.
1. In 2015, healthcare was the most attacked industry with nearly 100 million healthcare records compromised. Last year, the healthcare industry reported 12 million compromised records, marking an 88 percent decrease from a year prior. Researchers attribute the drop to cybercriminals focusing on smaller targets, according to IBM.
2. In 2016, the two industries with the highest amount of incidents and breached records were information and communications (3.4 billion records leaked and 85 breach incidents) and government (398 million records leaked and 39 breach incidents). Healthcare did not place within the top five most-breached industries last year.
3. The financial services industry was the most targeted for cyberattacks in 2016; however, it was only third in compromised records. “The lower success rate versus the high volume of attacks in financial services indicates that continued investment in sustained security practices likely helped protect financial institutions,” according to IBM.
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