Most data breaches occur in North America and retail, report finds

The ‘2018 Trustwave Security Report says that despite exhibiting a slight decline from 2016, North America led the pack in data breaches with 43%, followed by Asia Pacific on 30%, Europe, Middle East and Africa on 23%, and Latin America on 4%. The retail sector suffered the most breach incidences at 16.7% followed by the finance and insurance industry at 13.1% and hospitality at 11.9%.

Of great concern is a marked increase at 9.5% in compromises targeting businesses that provide IT services including web-hosting providers, POS integrators and help-desk providers. Down from 2016, payment card data at 40% still reigns supreme in terms of data types targeted in a breach. The figure is split between magnetic stripe data at 22% and card-not-present (CNP) at 18%.

Trustwave also provided an overview of how cybercrime has advanced in the last decade. Some of the key findings included a sharp surge in vulnerabilities after remaining relatively level from 2008 to 2011. This is believed to be a result of the huge increase in users of the Internet during that time, as well as technically savvy security researchers (as well as criminals) actively looking for vulnerabilities every day.