Accidents blamed for more data breaches at banks than hacks

More security breaches at banks in the past 10 years have been caused by lost or stolen devices than by hacking, according to a new report. 

A study of reported breaches at banks since 2006 by security firm Bitglass shows at least 25 percent of data breaches were traced to a lost laptop, phone or another device that had data on it.

{mosads}The exact number is impossible to pin down — many breaches in the study did not have a cause listed. Hacking was definitively to blame in 20 percent of the cases, Bitglass said. But if all of the unidentified attacks were actually hacks, the breaches attributed to hacking would nearly double. 

“Naturally, security is a top priority for all enterprises in the sector, however cyber-attacks, lost devices, and unintended disclosures continue to plague the industry,” Bitglass said. 

A full 14 percent of breaches came through “unintended disclosures,” like attaching the wrong file to an email. That’s slightly more than the 13 percent that came through insider leaks. 

The report does not address the trends in breach causes, so it could very well be that intentional breaches have outpaced the unintentional ones.