33% of retail data has been leaked. Cyber ​​criminals are too rampant!

Cybercriminals used a range of techniques to defraud online shoppers during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Verizon's Data Breach Investigations Report.

The report shows that while the vast majority of data breaches in the retail industry still come from external sources, criminals are taking advantage of the closure of a large number of physical retail stores and the increase in online payments and orders to steal data.

According to Verizon, most cybercrime involving online shoppers is most likely to come from outside a retailer’s business. Data from a sample of 725 breaches in the retail industry showed that 84% were external breaches, and 99% of them were financially motivated.

The report also found that 33% of retail data breaches involved the theft of credential data, all of which included sensitive personal critical information, including payment (42%) and personal details (41%).

According to the study, system intrusions, social engineering and basic Web application attacks accounted for 77 percent of retail breaches.

It shows that scams and phishing have been on the rise over the past year, with the former appearing in more than a third of the breaches analyzed by Verizon, up from a quarter when compared to last year's report. This can be attributed largely to criminals targeting more people who shop online while non-essential retail is closed.

Alex Pinto, lead author of the report, said the retail sector continues to be targeted by financially motivated criminals looking to capitalize on the industry’s well-known combination of payment card and personal information, with much success.

Social tactics include pretexting and phishing, the former of which often results in fraudulent money transfers. Approximately 54% of all breaches in the retail industry involve some form of human factor, a significant number in a field as diverse as retail.

To that end, hopefully retailers will take note of these findings and use them to help shape their defense strategies.

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