Healthcare industry most common victim of third-party breaches last year
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Black Kite released its annual Third-Party Breach Report, which examines the impact of third-party cyber breaches in 2021. Ransomware was the most common attack method behind third-party breaches in 2021, initiating more than one out of four incidents analyzed.
Despite immense cybersecurity improvements following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare industry was the most common victim of attacks caused by third parties, accounting for 33% of incidents last year. With its rich and diverse personally-identifiable information (PII) data, the government sector accounted for 14% of third party attacks in 2021.
Attackers were able to infiltrate networks and steal data through a variety of methods including exploiting weak passwords and access controls to gain unauthorized network access. Insecure external facing servers and databases also provided...