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In recent years, cybersecurity has become one of the most important factors to consider for any business, across all industries. Organisations of every type are now reliant on digital technology for everything from customer care to data protection, and this dependence comes with an increased risk of cyberattack.
The consequences of a data breach can be colossal, from the financial fall out to the reputational fall from grace. While all businesses need to make cybersecurity a priority, the industry you’re in will have a direct impact on your level of risk, with certain industries facing more severe potential consequences than others. With that in mind, here are the industries facing the biggest risk of a data breach.
The healthcare industry has paid the highest average cost for data breaches compared to other industries for the past thirteen years, according to Verizon. Human errors were the most common causes of data leaks, but third party vulnerabilities and basic web application attacks also featured highly.
Of the attacks on the healthcare industry, 95% are financially motivated. Attackers get hold of people’s financial information, bank details and more in order to steal money from them. Unfortunately, gaining access to sensitive medical information is also a prime weapon for those cybercriminals willing to blackmail their victims.
And the threat to healthcare organisations isn’t just applicable to the UK. A huge 314,063,186 medical records were exposed in the US between 2009 and 2021, according to the HIPAA Journal Healthcare Data Breach Statistics.
The Verizon 2022 Data Breach Investigation Report found that 27% of data breaches in the finance and insurance industries could be traced back to insider activity. Competitor hired hackers, corporate espionage and so-called ‘hacktivism’ all feature highly in this industry, where individuals’ card details and financial information can be used against them.
DDoS attacks (those used to disrupt the smooth services provided by businesses) are also common in the financial sector. In 2020, DDoS attacks on the New Zealand Stock Exchange stopped its operations for four days.
Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, even those educational organisations that didn’t rely on technology a few years ago do so today. Data storage in the cloud, online documentation and payments, and digital data courses are all at risk from hackers without the proper defences in place.
Personal data is accessed for financial gain, usually through methods of social engineering, system intrusion and miscellaneous errors. Phishing attempts can cause education staff to unwittingly providing data access to hackers.
The trading of goods and services for money lends itself to criminal activity, and hackers create sophisticated scenarios to provoke people into unwittingly making money transfers to untrustworthy recipients. These phishing techniques can result in devastating consequences, with the average cost of a retail data breach in 2021 reaching £2.7 million according to the Ponemon Institute.
Store data breaches result in the exposure of personal online account details, card numbers, passwords and more. The 2022 Thales Data Threat Report also revealed that 52% of retail security managers experienced cloud data breaches.
By dealing with community and government documentation, public administration finds itself at huge potential risk of data breach. Malicious actors can invade government databases to obtain information that can be utilised for financial gain or espionage. This was seen most recently when Russian state-sponsored hackers breached US defence databases and stole military infrastructure data from 2020 – 2022.
Similarly, the hacking of Dworczyk’s email box in 2021 resulted in the leak of 60,000 emails. This has forced governments to do more to protect their data; the EU recently bolstered its Cyber Diplomacy Toolbox to enhance prevention and cyber response.
Whether or not your organisation belongs to any of these industries, it is vital that you take the necessary steps to protect your business from a potential data disaster.
