The Importance of Statistics
As a leader, I’m big on statistics. I believe it to be one of the more efficient tools within our toolbox to help drive meaningful conversation throughout the leadership team and business in general. Statistics are real facts that show the real picture and allow us to deliver a more realistic story of what we are up against. As you look to justify the need for additional funding for your cybersecurity program, there probably hasn’t been an easier time than now with all the statistics and real-life examples of compromises. It is also important to ensure your executive leadership team and board are fully aware of what is happening around us and what impact and implications can occur at any time because of a cybersecurity event. The same applies for user awareness, wherein leveraging statistics and real-life examples provides some very powerful stories that can relate to users to provide better awareness.
Key Reports and Findings
There are countless annual reports being released with great information. I personally reference many of these reports as they provide very useful information on the current state of cybersecurity and the threat landscape.
IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report
The first is IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report. The 2023 report provided data from 553 organizations affected by data breaches throughout 16 countries and regions within 17 industries. The following provides some data points from the executive summary within the report:
- An all-time high of $4.45 million was reported as the average cost of a data breach, which is a 2.3% increase from $4.35 million in 2022, and a 15.3% increase from $3.86 million in 2020.
- As a result of a breach, 51% of organizations plan to increase investments in security.
- The use of security AI and automation provided an average reduction of a 108-day time frame to identify and contain a breach. A $1.76 million reduction in data breach costs was also reported versus those that didn’t use security AI or automation.
- Only 1 in 3 organizations self-identified a breach. Third parties and attackers represent 67% of reported breaches.
- It was noted that organizations experienced an additional cost of $470,000 by not involving law enforcement.
- The healthcare industry continues to report the largest expense from data breaches, a 53.3% increase in breach costs since 2020.
- 82% of breaches included cloud infrastructure.
- Greater levels of incident response planning and testing saved organizations $1.49 million when containing a data breach.
Source: https://www.ibm.com/security/data-breach
Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report (DBIR)
Another great resource is the Verizon DBIR. Like the IBM report, this report is built on a set of real-world data and contains some eye-opening statistics on data breaches. Here are some of the findings from the summary of the 2023 report:
- Within the social engineering category, Business Email Compromise (BEC) represents more than 50% of incidents.
- 95% of breaches are financially driven.
- The human element is included in 74% of breaches. This is through either human error, privilege misuse, stolen credentials, or social engineering.
- External actor involvement made up 83% of the breaches.
- Stolen credentials, phishing, and exploitation of vulnerabilities are the primary entry points for attackers.
- Ransomware is present in 24% of breaches.
CISO Perspectives and Challenges
A report providing perspectives from the CISO is Proofpoint’s 2023 Voice of the CISO Report. This report provides insight from 1,600 global CISOs. Some of the highlights provided in this report include:
- A staggering 68% agreed they are at risk of a material breach within 12 months.
- A loss of sensitive information within the previous year was reported by 63%.
- Burnout was reported by 60% within the previous 12 months.
- Personal liability was shared as a concern by 62%.
- 62% responded that cybersecurity expertise at the board level should be a requirement.
Source: https://www.proofpoint.com/us/resources/white-papers/voice-of-the-ciso-report
Since the topic of personal liability came up in the Proofpoint report, it’s important to note an added burden for executives that has recently come to light. There have now been instances of executives being charged with negligence. A few that have made the media include the CSO from Uber, the CEO of Vastaamo, and the CISO of SolarWinds (Case is still pending as of August 2024).
Federal Bureau of Investigation Internet Crime Report
A report I like to reference that includes consumer data statistics is the Federal Bureau of Investigation Internet Crime Report released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). This one is important as it allows us to relate cybersecurity more to our users and their everyday lives in terms of how cybersecurity can impact them and their families personally. This is important and I’ll be covering this more in Chapter 9, Cybersecurity Awareness, Training and Testing. In 2022, it was stated that more than $10.2 billion in losses were reported from 800,944 complaints.
The following chart taken from the IC3 website represents a very concerning trend and presents a strong message and reminder of what we continue to be challenged with:
Figure 1.4: IC3 complaint statistics over the last 5 years
Source: https://www.ic3.gov/
Additional Resources and Staying Updated
As stated, there are many great reports now being published by various vendors with a lot of great information; there are too many to cover in this book. A few others worth noting are the Microsoft annual Digital Defense Report (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/security-insider/microsoft-digital-defense-report-2023), Proofpoint’s annual Board Perspective Report (https://www.proofpoint.com/us/resources/white-papers/board-perspective-report), and Secureworks, State of the Threat: A Year in Review Report (https://www.secureworks.com/resources/rp-state-of-the-threat-2023). These reports are typically annual and a quick search on Google should return the latest report. When using data and statistics as a reference, make sure you confirm there is a good dataset being referenced to provide the output.
Throughout the book, I will continue to reference statistics and data points to help with some of the justification around why certain functions within your program are important.
In addition to the reports being referenced, there are many resources you can utilize to keep up to date with the latest news, which it is vital for leaders to do. There are many sources available to view security news, follow the latest trends, and understand the current best practices. There is no way I could even begin to list all of them, but the following are some general resources to help keep you up to date with the latest news and information:
- Dark Reading: https://www.darkreading.com/
- Cyware: https://cyware.com/cyber-security-news-articles
- SANS Cyber Security Newsletters: https://www.sans.org/newsletters/
- Cybersecurity Insiders: https://www.cybersecurity-insiders.com/
- CSO: https://www.csoonline.com/
- Krebs on Security: https://krebsonsecurity.com/
- The Hacker News: https://thehackernews.com/
- Darknet Diaries podcast: https://darknetdiaries.com/
- Risky Biz podcast: https://risky.biz/
A quick Google search or interaction with ChatGPT will return many additional resources for review. The following is an example of a resource that provides over 50 blogs and websites for reference: https://heimdalsecurity.com/blog/best-cyber-security-blogs/.
We will cover more specific details on threat intelligence and ways to obtain this type of information in Chapter 7, Cybersecurity Operations.
Moving on from some general statistics, let’s take a closer look at some data around tracking breaches and some places that will provide more awareness on the volume of breaches occurring.
Breaches Continue to Rise
If you follow the news, you are probably aware that there is no shortage of breaches today. They are happening so frequently that it has become a daily occurrence. What is even more concerning is that these are the ones that we hear about; how many do we not hear about?
Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC)
A great resource to reference is the ITRC. The ITRC is a non-profit in the United States that provides help to victims of identity crime at no cost. In addition to the services provided, it also provides a great source called notified to search for any known breaches. To access it, you can visit https://www.idtheftcenter.org/notified and search for a breach by time frame, attack vector, and/or company name:
Figure 1.5: Sample list of data breaches from notified on ITRC
ITRC Data Breach Reports
In addition to notified, ITRC issues quarterly, semi-annual, and annual data breach reports. These reports highlight a lot of eye-opening data relating to breaches that have occurred.
The following diagram shows the 2022 Annual Data Breach Report, which indicates total compromises, total victims, and the top 10 compromises among other useful data points.
Figure 1.6: The ITRC 2022 Annual Data Breach Report key findings
Source: https://www.idtheftcenter.org/publication/2022-data-breach-report/
Wikipedia’s List of Data Breaches
Another good reference for reviewing breaches is Wikipedia’s List of data breaches page. This is quite a comprehensive list of many of the major breaches referencing back to their sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_data_breaches. As you review the breaches on the Wikipedia page and understand how they occurred, you will see a common trend where, for the most part, the breach occurred due to hacking or poor security practices. You might also notice that other common methods of breaches include lost or stolen equipment. These statistics are alarming, and they indicate how critical it is to implement a mature cybersecurity program to reduce risk as much as possible.
Another great reference with a very powerful visual is provided on Visual Capitalist, which shows the 50 biggest data breaches from 2004 to 2021. The number of records lost from the 50 breaches totals 17.2 billion. You can view the visual here: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/visualizing-the-50-biggest-data-breaches-from-2004-2021/.
Consumer Impact and Awareness
As a consumer, you’re probably thinking, “Have I been impacted? And how would I even know if I’ve been impacted?” Ethically, an organization that has suffered a data breach with your information should inform you. But this is not always the case as many organizations may not be required to notify their customers because of a lack of regulation and/or the data type that has been compromised. I’ve encountered this firsthand, and I have reached out to organizations stating that I know my information has been compromised to challenge them. If you want to do some research on your own, one resource that probably contains the most comprehensive dataset of compromised information is https://haveibeenpwned.com/. Here you will be able to search the database to see if your email address has been part of a previous breach. You can also sign up for notifications for any breaches using your email address or submit a specific domain to be notified on.
Assumption of Compromise and Defensive Measures
I personally go with the mindset that my data has already been compromised. And there’s a high possibility your account information, including passwords, is sitting on the dark web somewhere.
Because of this, we need to be more careful, and look at ways to be better prepared to handle any situation that arises when our personal data is being used for any fraudulent activity.
For example, in the United States, purchasing identity protection as a service to monitor your identity can serve as an insurance policy if you incur any damages. In addition to this, the ability to place your credit reports on hold to prevent bad actors from opening accounts under your name is an example of a defensive approach that you can take to protect your personal identity.
There are many identity protection plans available today. A couple of notable ones include Norton LifeLock (https://www.lifelock.com/) and Aura Identity Guard (https://www.identityguard.com/). For those in the United States, you can lock your credit record for free online on each of the credit bureaus’ websites: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion.
As statistics show, we have an extremely challenging road ahead of us as we continue to defend against very mature threat groups throughout the world. And as already stated, even more concerning are organizations that are beginning to close their doors forever because of the added burden of these types of threats.
