Russia suffered the second-largest number of confidential data leaks in the first half of this year but company employees themselves are to blame for most of them, the Kommersant business daily reported Tuesday.
The analysis center of InfoWatch, a Moscow-based online security company, said more than 262 million personal data records had been compromised as a result of 59 data leaks in Russia in the first six months of the year, Kommersant reported Tuesday.
The security breaches affected private and state-owned companies including mobile network operator MTS, VTB-24 bank and Russian Railways, as well as U.S. giants Apple, Google and Microsoft and Chinese tech firm Lenovo, the report said.
In 90 percent of the breaches, personal data records were compromised, including people's payment details, the report said.
InfoWatch said that 65 percent of the breaches had been facilitated by the companies' own employees, with targeted attacks such as phishing accounting for only 32 percent of overall cases.
“In one-third [of targeted attacks], leakers simply printed out the information and took it with them,” InfoWatch head Natalya Kasperskaya was cited as saying by Kommersant.
Meanwhile, spending in Russia on data loss prevention software, or DLP, is growing at a faster rate than the global average, increasing by 25 percent in 2014, Kommersant cited the head of analysis at security company Zecurion, Vladimir Ulyanov, as saying.
Overall, InfoWatch registered 723 public data leaks — a 10 percent increase compared to the same period last year, the report said.
The report did not specify which country had the most data leaks, but an InfoWatch report from 2014 showed the U.S. as taking up a leading position that year.
