10 Things to Know About Public Entities & Cyber Risk

1. Last year data breaches in the government/military sector accounted for 11.7 percent of U.S. breach incidents. —Identity Theft Resource Center
2. The practice of employing encryption strategies in the public sector rose from 23 percent in 2012 to 33 percent in 2015. —Ponemon Institute 2016 Global Encryption Trends Study
3. Trends over the past four years suggest the most significant increases in extensive encryption usage occur in public sector, retail and technology and software firms. —Ponemon Institute
4. Last year broke the previous all-time record for the number of reported data breach incidents. The 3,930 incidents reported during 2015 exposed over 736 million records. The previous record was set in 2012. —RiskBased Security’s Data Breach QuickView report
5. Four Hacking incidents alone exposed a combined 237.8 million records. Hacking and the web resulted in 89.3 percent of all exposed records. —RiskBased Security’s Data Breach QuickView report
6. The Secret Service’s Cyber Intelligence Section has contributed to the arrest of transnational cyber criminals responsible for the theft of hundreds of millions of credit card numbers and the loss of roughly $600 million to financial and retail institutions. —Department of Homeland Security
7. A polling of 240 public risk managers attending the 2014 Public Risk Management Conference and the 2014 National Association of Counties Conference showed only 13 percent of respondents were “very confident” that their public entity has adequate protection against cyber threats. —Robin Leal, underwriting director at Travelers Public Sector Services, writing for American City & County
8. Forty-seven states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands have enacted legislation requiring private, government or educational entities to notify individuals of security breaches of personally identifiable information. —National Conference of State Legislatures
9. Digital strategy is a growing priority in nonprofits. Organizations are spending between 10 percent and 20 percent of their overall fundraising budget for digital strategy. —Nonprofit Technology Network
10. Cloud services are a big part of nonprofit operations. A survey from last year shows 100 percent of respondents indicated they use at least two cloud services, up from 80 percent of survey participants in the 2014 survey. —Nonprofit Technology Network

Topics Cyber