There are many different types of IT Security incidents that can take place in businesses. Here we will look at some of the more common ones as reported in an Information Security breaches report produced by the UK Government.

The types of incidents can be broken into many areas. The first area we will look at is systems failure and data corruption. The main causes of these incidents were hardware failures, not fully testing changes to systems before being implemented and problems with backups. This type of incident affected around two thirds of large firms (over 250 employees) and about 60% of small firms (less than 50 employees) according to the report.

An example of one of these incidents is when a large London bank made a systems change which led to a failure in the main payment system. This resulted in incorrect payments being made. Although most incidents in this category were caused by technology faults, human error also plays a role and it is very evident that there were a higher number of human errors within companies where the IT security policy was not fully understood, above companies where it is.

Infection by viruses and malicious software are still a major threat to businesses. These are often caused unintentionally by staff clicking malicious links or downloading infected attachments. Almost 60% of large businesses were affected by this type of incident, while 40% of small firms were affected in 2012. Results from the report show that many businesses are still leaving themselves open to these types of threats by not applying patches and not having up to date business antivirus software in place.

There were a number of incidents involving the “Conficker Worm” reported in 2012, despite a patch being available for this since 2008. One example involving the “Conficker Worm” was reported when an employee at a large bank inserted an unauthorised USB device into an unpatched computer. In doing so, the employee allowed the “Conficker Worm” into the network. This caused major disruption to the business for several days and cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to clean up the infection.

More sophisticated viruses are being written every day and the battle between cyber criminals and anti-virus solution providers has been relentless. Virus infections continue to be one of the most costly breaches to deal with.

At Topsec Technology we offer a wide range of IT security solutions including business antivirus software and online backup, which will greatly reduce the risk of your company being breached. To find out more information about our services contact us.

To read part 2 of this article click here.

Source: UK Government IT Security Report