Study Finds Most European Breaches Caused by Organizational Error, Insider Attacks

Maritza Santillan  Oct 10, 2014
 
 
A new study released by the Center for Media, Data and Society (CMDS) revealed that the main cause of European privacy breaches comes from an organization’s own errors, insider abuse and other internal mismanagement.
 
According to Phil Howard, Central European University Professor and director of the study, only 41 percent of incidents examined involved external attacks by hackers. Meanwhile, 57 percent of incidents were caused by administrative error, exposed online, stolen by insiders, or caused by missing hardware.
 
The study investigated 350 European breaches throughout a 10-year period, from 2005 to the third quarter of 2014, with specific speculation of the 229 incidents that directly affected the privacy of people in Europe
 
“We hear a lot of news stories about news hackers who break into systems and steal our personal information,” said Howard. “But that was the minority of incidents.”
 
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