Government Employees Cause Nearly 60% Of Public Sector Cyber Incidents

About 58 percent of cyber incidents reported in the public sector were caused by government employees, according to an annual data breach report compiled by Verizon.

The findings -- stripped of identifying information -- do not mention ex-contractor Edward Snowden's mammoth leak of national secrets. Even if Snowden's leaks had been included in the tally of results attributed to insider threats, they wouldn't have made much of a dent.

Most (34 percent) of the insider incidents in the global public sector during the past three years were miscellaneous errors such as emailing documents to the wrong person. Unapproved or malicious use of data by public servants accounted for 24 percent of reported incidents. Surprisingly, cyberspying and intrusions via security holes in websites, known to be big problems in government, represented less than 1 percent of the situations reported.

The off-kilter numbers in government reflect mandatory reporting requirements for mundane incidents, Jay Jacobs, a Verizon senior analyst and co-author of the report, said. Small data leaks that happen every day overshadow frequent, but not daily, hacks.