Activists with hacker skills were behind more than half the data stolen in cyber attacks last year, according to findings released last Thursday by Verizon Communications.

The amount of spam email in 2011 was about half that in 2010

While criminal groups accounted for an overwhelmingly majority of cyber strikes on networks, “hacktivists” were the ones who rampantly looted data once inside computers, Verizon said in an annual Data Breach Investigations Report.

About 98 per cent of computer network breaches at companies last year were the work of outsiders, with criminal groups out for profit were figured to be behind 83 per cent of those attacks.

However, it was self-described activist organizations such as Anonymous and Lulz Security who stole 58 per cent of the data while being involved in far fewer cyber attacks, according to Verizon.

The report cited data provided by the US Secret Service, the Dutch National High Tech Crime Unit, the Australian Federal Police, the Irish Reporting and Information Security Service and the Police Central e-Crime Unit of the London Metropolitan Police.

The Verizon findings were released on the same day that an IBM X-Force 2011 Trend and Risk report indicated that tightened security at companies is forcing cyber crooks to rethink tactics and shift to new fronts such as smartphones.

The X-Force report indicated hackers were increasingly resorting to automated password guessing programs, attacks on mobile gadgets, and “phishing” attacks that trick people into downloading viruses or revealing sensitive information.

“We’ve seen surprisingly good progress in the fight against computer crime through the IT industry’s efforts to improve the quality of software,” said X-Force threat intelligence and strategy manager Tom Cross.

In a bit of good news, the amount of spam email in 2011 was about half that in 2010, according to IBM.