Food and beverages industry are cybercriminals’ favorite targets

Cybercriminals were once believed to be techies who targetted large IT companies most of the time. A study by Trustwave says it’s not the technology companies that are under the biggest threat, it’s the food and beverages industry. The report was released after intensive study done over 2011. Some 300 data breaches were investigated and some 2,000 penetrations tests were performed before reaching this conclusion. This isn’t the first year that the food and beverages industry has been hit - it’s the second year in a row, the report says. It also reveals some other interesting statistics about the security in many organizations. For example, 44 percent of investigations were around the food and beverages industry in 2011. 

Hungry for more…

The study says that customer records are what the cybercriminals are most after. Some 89 percent of all data breached was to do with customer databases and personal details. Some of the rather surprising things about the investigations was a lot of businesses used ‘Password1’ as their password. This was done so that they could bypass the Microsoft Active Directory’s basic requirement for a password to be deemed as secure. Most organizations aren’t particular about the kind of passwords used and system administrators across companies don’t enforce stricter passwords. Food franchise and chain stores are supposedly the most attacked since the security systems on each one of the chain stores are common, so it’s easy to attack different stores with the same exploits.

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There are also some interesting bits of information about e-mails. Apparently e-mails sent between 8am and 9am (US Eastern time) is the time you’re most likely to get your PC infected by an attachment with malicious content in it. All isn’t lost though - law enforcement agencies have been more aggressive in the past year and detecting of breaches has increased close to five times in the past year. 33 percent of such organizations have been notified by these law enforcement agencies as compared to 7 percent in the year before.

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