According to Phillips, this raised a question mark over the effectiveness of mandatory regimes such as the industry Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). Problems included flawed self assessment and the over-use of automated compliance tools.

"Automated scans don't pick everything up as would a person," says Phillips. Scanners would only test accessible pages, for instance, whereas a human would look for further login pages not so easily reached. Vulnerabilities might lie on these unnoticed by bots.

Standing back from the figures it is hard to know how accurately the breach proportions in this report reflect wider business experience. As Phillips himself acknowledges, internal hacks are almost certainly under-reported for a variety of reasons and the UK lacks any legal requirement to report breaches of any sort. It also doesn't give many clues as to the seriousness of a breach as opposed to its frequency.Online data is clearly, however, a soft underbelly for criminals. "The analysis proves that many organisations who declare themselves compliant with the PCI Data Security Standards are not even close," the report concludes.