Bangalore:  Cyberattacks have become a major issue in the internet world. These anti-social have been increasing exponentially over the past few years and turning out be more sophisticated every passing day. Yet, hackers used relatively simple methods in more than 90% of data breaches in 2011 says a recent report released by Verizon.

The report says that since hacktivists used fairly simple techniques most of these cyberattacks during the previous year could have been avoided, had the companies taken extra care of their basic security of the organization.

 Verizon's 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report is based on the assessment of over 850 data breaches that took place in the previous year. It was compiled with help of law enforcement agencies in the UK, Ireland, Australia, and The Netherlands as well as US Secret Service. The report also said that in most of the breaches the hackers did not have or didn’t require skills or resources. Moreover most hacks did not require the hackers to do much customization work. In fact, Verizon said that 96% of the attacks "were not highly difficult" for the hackers.

"Additionally, 97% were avoidable, without the need for organizations to resort to difficult or expensive countermeasures," the report said.

One interesting fact is that, the companies breached had no firewalls, had ports open to the Internet or used default or easily guessable passwords, said Marc Spitler a Verizon security analyst. During the study it was also found that cybercriminals did not have to work any harder to break into a large organization than into a small one.

Seems like the year 2011 was favorable to the attackers as they didn't need new sophisticated tools to break into most organizations, Spitler said.

"We have seen nothing new. Some of the old standbys are continuing to work very well for the people going after information," he said. "Not enough has been done to raise the bar and to force them to spend" added Spitler.

The findings once again highlight the need for companies to pay attention to security basics, Spitler said.

"It is about going back to basic security principles. A lot of the same recommendations we have used in past years, we have recommended this year," says the security analyst.