Cyber breaches spike as hackers step up breaches against companies

Organised criminal gangs of hackers got smarter and faster, and were able to cast their net wider last year, pulling off 312 major breaches against companies. That was up 23 per cent from the year before, according to Symantec's 2014 Internet threat report.

Health care companies emerged as major targets, with 37 per cent of breaches in that sector, as against 11 per cent in retail and 10 per cent in education according to the security company's annual review of the seamier side ot the web.

Things were not any better for individuals as Symantec, maker of Norton security software, found that fully 60 per cent of all email was spam, though thankfully most email systems filtered out much of it.

That was down from 66 per cent in 2013, Symantec said, but the numbers were still enormous. The number of spam emails was estimated at 28 billion per day in 2014, down from 29 billion a day in 2013.

Though marginally down, they were more dangerous than ever and one of out every 965 emails included a phishing attack, which meant an email that included an attachment or link which, when opened, infected the victim's computer, Symantec found.

Ransomware too continued to grow, with the digital extortion rings involving cyber thieves hijacking victims' systems and locking up their data, then demanding a ransom to unlock it.

The thieves typically charged between $300 and $500 to free the files, but paying did not mean people could get their data back.

Following a wave of high-profile attacks on banks and retailers over the last two years, almost 80 per cent of the calls to Symantec's global "incident response" service since December had come from health organisations, according to Robert Shaker, a Symantec official with oversight over the commercial service.

It might be possible for the hackers to inadvertently disrupt computer systems that oversaw medication and other other life-saving treatments, Shaker said during a press event Monday.

The health sector's vulnerability to hackers was highlighted earlier this year when Anthem, the giant insurance firm, reported a data breach affecting up to 80 million customers (See: Hackers strike US health insurance giant Anthem; steal millions of personal data). 

However,  as each sector strengthened its defences, Shaker said, hackers moved on to new industries that might be vulnerable. He predicted schools and universities might be the next prime targets.