Ransomware attacks continued to increase during the first halfof 2017, up 50% over the first half of 2016, but accidentalbreaches remain an enormous factor, accordingto a new report from Beazely. The cyber and data breach insurance company, which has collected data on cyberbreaches since 2014, found that the number of breachescontinue to increase, suggesting companies aren't adapting theirsecurity measures to properly protect data.

Accidental breaches caused by employee error or issues occurringwhile data is controlled by third-party suppliers accounted for 30%of overall breaches, while those those resulting from hackingand malware attacks make up 32% of all breaches.

Various business sectors were prone to different types ofbreaches. For example, higher education saw one-quarter of cyberbreaches occur due to unintended data disclosures, while nearlyhalf of the breaches in the data systems of higher educationinstitutions were from hacking and malware.

Professional service firms had the lowest rate of unintendedbreaches, at 14%. But while this relatively low rate mightsuggest these firms have more security in place, the percentage hasrisen from 9% in 2016.

Two of the most sensitive types of data, financial and healthcare, also suffered some of the highest rates of employee-causedbreaches. Nearly one-third of data breaches at financialinstitutions were the result of unintended disclosure — sending bank account details or personal information to thewrong recipient. This type of error became more common in thefinancial services industry over the last few years, even asinstances of hacks and malware dropped.

Unintended disclosure also accounted for the majority of lossesin the health care sector, accounting for 42% of data securitybreaches for the second straight year.

The study's data comes from a Beazley survey of more than 1,300data breaches at companies in a variety of sectors in the first sixmonths of 2017.