Fraud through POS hacking has fallen over the last few years, despite headline-grabbing incidents such as the Target data breach, according to Verizon.

Verizon’s annual Data Breach Incident Report found that the proportion of data breaches occurring through POS intrusion has fallen from a peak of 60% in 2011, to accounting for just 14% of breaches in 2013.

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Verizon said: "While POS hacks are getting more press recently, they really have been going on for years and we really have talked quite a bit about them in previous DBIRs.

"The media frenzy makes quite a splash, but from a frequency standpoint, this largely remains a small-and-medium business issue."

POS hacks accounted for 31% of the total data breaches from 2011 to 2013 and had the heaviest impact on the accommodation and retail industries, where they accounted for 75% and 31% of breaches respectively.

Attacks through web apps have become the most common kind of attack, accounting for 35% of data breach incidents in 2013, whereas in 2011 they accounted for around 10% of incidents.

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Web app attacks impacted the information industry most heavily, where they were behind 41% of security breaches but also had a strong affect across several other areas including utilities, trade and finance.

Card skimmer attacks fell to 9% of overall breaches, after reaching a high point of around 40% in 2010. They were behind 14% of breaches from 2011-2013.

The Verizon report was comprised of data from 50 participating organisations and 63,000 confirmed security incidents.

 

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