Shifting Attack Motivations

Attackers have typically gone after companies largely for financial gains. That tendency was no different this past year, the report found, accounting for more than three-fourths of all breaches. But even given that typical motivation, Ostertag said, partners shouldn't discount the continued threats of nation state attacks and espionage, despite the drop in the percentage of attacks being driven by those motivations. The report also noted a high prominence of so-called secondary attacks, in which the goal of compromise is to get information needed for a subsequent attack. This category would largely "overshadow" all other motivations, the report said, so it is not included in its percentage breakdown of what information hackers are targeting.