Financial gain remains the key motivation for cybercrime despite extensive media coverage of espionage, accounting for 86 percent of breaches investigated in the Verizon Business 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR).
The vast majority of breaches continue to be caused by external actors - 70 percent - with organised crime accounting for 55 percent of these.
Credential theft and social attacks such as phishing and business email compromises cause the majority of breaches (more than 67 percent).
Thirty percent of credential theft breaches used stolen or weak credentials and 25 percent involved phishing while human error accounted for 22 percent.
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