Most Security Breaches Go Unreported

Most Security Breaches Go Unreported

An RSA survey found the e-mail-borne malware and phishing that affected 69% of respondents' companies, may not have led to serious consequences in every instance.  But 29% of those answering the survey said their organizations experienced customer or employee data leakage. Twenty-eight percent reported insider threats or theft and 16% reported intellectual property theft.


Security incidents, as defined by the study, represent "an unexpected activity that brought sudden risk to the organization and took one or more security personnel to address."



Such findings echo a recent a study of over 500 data breach forensic investigations conducted by Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Business Security Solutions. According to Bryan Sartin, VP of investigative response at Verizon, the publicly reported breaches are "just the tip of iceberg." He said that less than 5% of the more than 500 cases covered in the Verizon study involved some form of disclosure.



In short, companies appear to be far more insecure than they acknowledge. The RSA survey indicates that 46% of companies experienced no security incidents in 2007, 19% experienced 1 to 2, 14% experienced 3 to 5, 7% experienced 6 to 10, 3% experienced 11 to 20, and 13% experienced more than 20 security incidents.



The top security challenge, according to respondents, is lost or stolen devices (49%), followed by non-malicious employee error and employee education (tied at 47%), budgetary constraints (44%), external hacking threats (38%), executive buy-in (26%), and malicious insider threats (22%).