The UK government’s 2015 information security breaches survey shows that innovation often brings new risks, revealing there has been an increase in information security breaches caused or enabled by technology meant to improve productivity and increase collaboration.

The survey showed 13% of large organisations had a security or data breach in the past year relating to social networking sites, barely changed from a year ago, but 15% of large organisations had a security or data breach involving smartphones or tablets, up from just 7% a year ago.

There was an increase of only 2% in the proportion of security or data breaches relating to cloud computing services to 7%, while only 3% of the worst data breaches were due to portable media bypassing defences, down from 10% a year ago.

The report said the difference between the higher levels of uptake of cyber threat intelligence and cyber liability insurance reflects different rates of maturity across industry of how security risks are managed.

Although there appears to be a large drop in insurance coverage, this may be due to a greater understanding of the cover provided by standard business disruption insurance policies in the event of an information security breach.

The survey revealed that 39% of large organisations have insurance to cover them in the event of a breach, down from 52% a year ago, while 27% of small businesses have coverage, down from 35% in 2014. Some 63% of respondents currently invest in or plan to invest in threat intelligence to actively monitor threats, which is slightly down from 69% a year ago.