The Digital Forensics Association just completed a fascinating new report ominously titled “The Leaking Vault – Five Years of Data Breaches”. The report analyzes over 2,800 data loss incidents from publicly accessible sources and is the largest study of its kind. It’s a great read if you have a strong stomach for forty two pages of data breach data.
One eye popping data point is that during 2005 – 2009, 148.6 million records have been reported lost due to use of portable media. This source of data breach is second only to data hacks. Perhaps most alarming is that loss of data from portable media represents the fastest growing data breach sector.
The security risks from portable media is a topic we’ve covered several times in the past year in the Accellion Managed File Transfer Blog. Just in case you missed the earlier posts here they are again.
• Health records found on USB stick in UK Car Park
• Top 3 File Transfer Mistakes
• Another reason why file transfer via a USB stick is not a good idea
In addition to sharing the unpleasant truths regarding data breaches the Leaking Vault report also offers some good recommendations on steps to take to increase data security. Recommendations for securing Portable Data is one of their four focus topics.
Here’s Accellion’s recommendation for reducing the risk of data breach from portable media - Don’t use USB memory sticks for file transfer, use a secure file transfer solution.
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