Are hacking attempts tantamount to checking for unlocked doors?

A new study by Verizon Communications shows that of 500 data breaches since 2004, 87% of them could have been prevented through simple security practices. The study, which looked at cases that resulted in some 230 million records being compromised, shows that hackers maybe aren't as crafty as first thought when infiltrating corporate data systems. Rather, they're just scanning systems for known vulnerabilities and hoping for a hit.

Reminds me of "War Games" when Matthew Broderick's character was war dialing looking for modems that would pick up. Hackers are essentially doing the same thing, probing for softspots in a data network, such as an unpatched system.

A couple other scary stats from the study: 63 percent of cases went undetected for months, with the majority of those (70 percent) being brought to light by another party. Also, 34 percent of cases were related to a company's business partners in some way, which Verizon attributes to the increase in outsourcing of such things as call centers that require outside companies to access internal data.

Overall, the message of the survey is that while having a strong lock on the front door is great, forgetting to lock the back door can render the best security systems moot.

• Security