Deeper Dive: Phishing/Hacking/Malware Attacks Remain Leading Cause Of Security Incidents

During 2016, our BakerHostetler privacy and data protection team worked on data security incidents across virtually all industries. For the second year in a row, phishing/hacking/malware attacks have accounted for the largest percentage of incidents handled by our team. Specifically, security incidents arising from phishing/hacking/malware made up 43 percent of all security incidents we handled last year – a 12 percent jump from 2015 – with ransomware attacks (i.e., events where malware prevents or limits users from accessing their system until a ransom is paid) accounting for nearly a quarter of such incidents.

With the adoption of new technologies, the collection and use of larger amounts of data, and the increasing sophistication of cyber-attackers, the risk landscape for companies drastically changes from year to year. Last year saw the first security incident to affect more than 1 billion accounts, as well as a reported increase of more than 500 percent in