Verizon released its 15th annual Data Breach Investigations Report Tuesday morning, calling attention to the consequences caused by human elements and supply chain breaches. The report aims to increase awareness among organizations of what tactics threat actors are likely to use in data incidents and breaches. 

The 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report, or DBIR, analyzed 23,986 security incidents from November 1, 2020 to October 31, 2021. The DBIR includes data from Verizon and 87 other contributing organizations, the highest number of contributors the report has included to date. Of the security incidents analyzed, 5,212 cases were confirmed data breaches that disclosed data to unauthorized parties, according to the DBIR.

The report cites a steep 13% increase in ransomware breaches in the past five years, a 25% increase in this past year alone. 

Human element was concerned in 82% of these breaches, ranging from social attacks, errors, and misuse. 

Human error has shown to be a leading cause in the uptick of breaches, credited to be responsible for 13% of the breaches total. “Misconfigured cloud storage” was reported to influence this increase, according to the DBIR. Stolen credentials and phishing were also dominant among the attacks involving human elements.

Supply chain was responsible for 62% of system intrusion incidents, which involves threat actors compromising partners or organizations, according to the DBIR. 

The report also noted that the combination of breaches and ransomware attacks led to a sharp increase in stolen credentials and malware. 

In fact, external attacks made up 80% of global breaches to organizations, a rate four times higher than internal attacks. In the North American region alone, 90% of attacks were perpetrated by external actors, according to the DBIR. 

Motives for threat actors are primarily financially driven, a top motive since Verizon began tracking the motives behind data breaches in 2015. Espionage has consistently fallen second as a motive. The report states that espionage rates have increased in recent years.

The DBIR cites hacking as the top action that led to the release of unauthorized information. In fact, 70% of data breaches were caused by hacking, the report noted. Web applications and denial of service (DoS) hacking were the most common.

For the first time in the report’s 15 years, software updates were among the top vectors in the DBIR. Human carelessness followed. 

Of data compromised between 2017- 2021, credentials and personal information were the top confidentiality breaches. Threat actors used malware in 30% of these breach cases, and 20% of these breaches involved a social action such as phishing, according to the DBIR. 

Because the increase in ransomware attacks has surpassed the rates of the last five years combined, this year’s DBIR emphasizes the importance of information security in organizations and security initiatives. While the DBIR team admits that there is nothing certain about information security, as always, the report’s insights are practical for organizations combating and preventing data breaches.