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Organised criminals behind majority of data breaches

New figures from Verizon have highlighted the importance for small businesses to ensure their online security is up to scratch and properly protected by proper internet security software.

According to the 2009 Verizon Business Data Breach Investigations Report, organised criminal groups had a busy 2008 and were behind more than 285 million records breaches.

These crooks were behind 91 per cent of all compromised records, of which 99.6 per cent were compromised from servers and applications, the report states.

Examining thousands of data points from investigations around the world, the report concludes that 74 per cent of the breaches resulted from external sources, while 67 per cent were a result of "significant errors".

According to the report, cyber crooks and hackers prefer soft targets and "they do seem to know where best to apply the pressure when motivated".

However, internal sources also played their role as 32 per cent of the record breaches were attributed to business partners.

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