'Hacktivists' Lead Data Breach Threats, Study Finds

A tiny but motivated band of 'hacktivists' are supplanting professional criminals as the biggest single data breach threat to large enterprises, an analysis of hundreds of confirmed incident reports has found.

On the face of it, the numbers in Verizon's 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report (which covers 2011) suggest that hacktivism is more of a nuisance than a major threat, accounting for only 3 percent of the 855 recorded attacks looked at across several countries.

But despite the modest volume of attacks, hacktivist incidents often lead to far more spectacular losses. Verizon found that from a total of 174 million records (individual database entries as well as documents) compromised in the 855 incidents, 100 million were stolen by hacktivists.

This means that hactivism is a theme in only three out of every 100 incidents, but nearly six out of ten of the actual records that are compromised. (See also "Ten Best Practices to Prevent Data and Privacy Breaches.")

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