The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse recently reported there were 535 security breaches it recorded in 2011, and it highlighted some of the most significant breaches in the United States.
One of the most devastating security breaches occurred to Epsilon, an email service provider. The company believes the breach affected nearly 60 million email addresses, making it the largest of its kind.
The clients of Epsilon suffered from spear phishing, which is when a hacker sends out an email that appears to be from a client or other trusted party, but is designed to steal information from those who open the email.
In order to recover from this sort of data theft, a company would be relieved to have a professional liability insurance policy that covers cybercrime and security breaches.
In some cases, security breaches cannot be deterred by antivirus software, because the software is unable to detect them, according to the recent 2012 Global Security Report put together by Trustwave.
The report said, “The historical perception of antivirus and the sometimes blind faith in its ability to detect and stop malware is one of the reasons attackers are so successful in what they do.”