As organizations get more and more IT enabled, they extend their enterprise networks to connect to their partners. This makes working easier. Applications from once side can access the other and transactions can be enabled across both.

Is that all? A study by Verizon Business seems to indicate that there is a darker side to such extended networks.

According to The 2008 Data Breach Investigations Report, the trusted business partner poses a significant risk of attacks on your network. The percentage of attacks arising from partners has been steadily rising and was at 44% in 2007 as compared to just 8% in 2004.

At 18 %, internal sources of data breach are not insignificant either. And taken together, internal and partner sources present a very significant level of problem.

Source of data breach (same break may have multiple sources)

Trends in Data Breach Sources 2004 – 2007

Over time, threats from partner sources have grown, while enterprises have managed to reduce threat levels from internal and external sources.

According to the study, the food industry seems to be the most targeted by partners, followed by the financial sector. IT seems to be the industry who has the least problems. Food meanwhile, has the least percentage of threats coming from internal sources. Is the food industry not security savvy enough?

Data types compromised

No surprises here. Payment card data seems to be the most compromised data by far. Surprisingly, intellectual property, medical data and corporate financial data does not seem to be as attractive as credit card data. This seems to indicate that the culprits are more in it for personal gain than for organizational gain or for corporate fraud.

Source : The 2008 Data Breach Investigations Report by Verizon Business

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