In 2016 cyber espionage attacks became the most common type of attacks aimed at enterprises in the manufacturing, public sector and in education. In particular, compared to 2015, the number of such incidents has increased by 8% - from 13% to 21%. This information is provided by Verizon in its annual report on data leaks.

According to the report, in the industrial sector, incidents related to cyber espionage caused 94% of data leaks. In 93% of cases, attacks were organized from the outside, and their purpose was to gain access to commercial secrets.

Compared to 2015, the number of attacks using extortion software, as well as phishing attacks, has doubled. Of the 1,935 data leaks analyzed by Verizon, 40% were attributed to phishing attacks.

According to the report, 25% of data leaks were related to the actions of insiders who either intentionally abducted information, or accidentally lost laptops and other devices with important data.

Among other reasons for data leakage, experts call attacks on PoS-terminals, physical attacks using skimmers, attacks on web-applications and infection of devices with malicious software.