Whatever the causes, data loss affects everybody: the company, its employees and even its customers. According to B2B International survey customer information as well as financial data, both at 36%, are lost most often. This is closely followed by employee data – lost or stolen in 31% of cases.
The causes of data leakage can be both external and internal. 35% of IT specialists confirmed their companies had lost data due to malware infection – the most common external threat. The next most common causes are email-based attacks (21%) and phishing (17%). When it comes to internal threats, the loss of important data is most often caused by vulnerabilities in a company’s software (25%) that cybercriminals exploit to infect victim computers.
A high proportion of data leaks were from mobile devices: 23% of respondents identified the loss of data and 15% the theft of a mobile device as the cause of a data breach. In 13% of cases, important information fell into the wrong hands due to negligence, for example, sending messages to the wrong email address.
Petr Merkulov, Chief Product Officer, Kaspersky Lab points out that the range of cyber-threats leading to data loss illustrates how important it is for every company to realize the necessity of multi-level protection. An effective corporate security solution must protect against both external and internal threats using the right tools for the job: anti-malware technologies, corporate security policies, data leakage prevention methods, control tools and many other features. I’m glad to say you can find all these security measures and more in Kaspersky Lab’s business solutions.”
The survey involved over 3,300 IT specialists in 22 countries worldwide and was conducted in conjunction with Kaspersky Lab. The participants represented all business sizes: small, medium and enterprise.
