The State of IT Security: Hackers and Malware Go for the Breach [Infographic]

As businesses make the move to a more digitized marketplace, protecting intellectual and financial property becomes an increasingly important priority.

Verizon has been dutifully tracking breaches worldwide with its annual data breach report, and this year’s numbers revealed some startling facts about the state of IT security.

For starters, 2011 saw the second-highest number of compromised records lost. Even more shocking, 97 percent of breaches could have been prevented through simple or intermediate controls. That means that data theft isn’t necessarily rising due to increased actions by digital bandits, but possibly due to the inaction of too many businesses with regard to the most basic tenets of information security.

Backgroundcheck.org has put together an infographic highlighting the state of IT security, based on Verizon’s report. Here are a few important facts and stats from the infographic:

• 85 percent of breaches took two weeks to discover
• 96 percent of attacks were not highly difficult
• 98 percent of breaches came from external agents
• 67 percent of the external agents causing these breaches were from Eastern Europe
• 54 percent of breaches happened to accommodation and food service businesses

Check out the State of IT Security infographic from Backgroundcheck.org below.