IBM Report That Reports The Amount Of Leaked Data Has Risen By 566%

The 2017 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index was released in the US yesterday. The report states that the number of leaked records grew from 600 million to more than 4 billion by the end of 2016 – an increase of 566%. Richard Amstey, EMEA CTO at Intralinks, a Synchronoss company commented below.

Richard Anstey, CTO EMEA at Intralinks:

 “While, at first glance, the number of data leaks highlighted by this report is staggering – it’s not, perhaps, surprising. Cyber-attacks are becoming more commonplace, but human error is still a huge problem and accounts for a significant number of these, particularly in the financial services and healthcare sectors. Many employees bring bad cyber-security practices from home into the workplace, and businesses don’t realise the implications that these bad security habits can have on an organisation.

“Educating the workforce is as critical as implementing technology solutions to manage data flows, especially when handling very sensitive information. It is not financially viable – or legally sound – to focus solely on technology, process, or employee activity individually, because all three are important. There’s no silver bullet.

“If we want to take back control of our data, we need to start by ensuring businesses know what value their data has, where it flows across the world, where it is encrypted, and how it’s being used by its employees. Only then can organisations make informed decisions about how to manage and secure their data appropriately.”