2019 Data Breach Investigations Report. Photo courtesy of Verizon

Executives of corporations are increasingly being targeted by cybercriminals because of their access to data and ability to engage in social engineering, according to the 2019 Verizon Data Breach Report published last week.

The report was based on the analysis of 41,686 security incidents in 2018. The report noted 2,013 of those reports were confirmed data breaches. The analysis shows executives were compromised in 20% of data breach incidents studied in 2018.

It seems 71% of data breaches were financially motivated, according to the report, and the median amount stolen in a business email compromise scam was $24,439. Edward McAndrew, a partner at DLA Piper in Washington, D.C., said criminals are finding it more lucrative to scam executives and get money through business email compromise scams.

“There has also been a shift from stealing information in order to sell it and weaponizing accounts and systems to commit financial fraud,” McAndrew said.

Training goes a long way in preventing those attacks. Marcus Christian, a partner at Mayer Brown in Washington, D.C., said executives should be aware that they are targets of these kinds of attacks. He said they should put themselves in positions where they are less susceptible to attacks.

“People are more susceptible on a mobile device than they are on a computer,” Christian said. “In that medium you have a smaller screen and fewer ways of checking the authenticity of the messages you receive.”

The report further found that human resource departments are six times less likely to be targeted for an attack.

“I think the interesting thing about that is that Verizon's tracking of W2 scams really dropped a lot this year,” McAndrew said.

McAndrew explained that identities are cheap and more difficult to get. He said if hackers target an executive with a compromised business email, they'll have quicker access to funds because the executive is able to authorize the transfer of funds.

“One of the potential reasons why is that maybe we've gotten better at training on that and our human resources employees are not just falling for that scam as frequently,” McAndrew said.

The report also noted 57% of total breaches took more than one month to discover.

“We still see this dwell time gap where initial attack and compromise is taking minutes and discovery is taking months,” McAndrew said.

Jonathan Fairtlough, managing director of Kroll's cyber risk practice in Los Angeles, said in general the reason many of these attacks take time to discover is because many companies can't detect hackers once they are in a system.

“Most companies' [information technology] resources are focused on making sure everything runs well,” Fairtlough said.

Fairtlough said constant training helps, though companies should work to identify suspicious activity when it enters a system and find ways to monitor it before hackers steal important information.