Did You Know…Data Breaches Exposed More Than 18 Million Records PER DAY?

It looks like 2018 is going to be a record year for data breaches…in a bad way. Gemalto, a global digital security provider, released its Breach Level Index for the first half of 2018. When compared to the first half of 2017, the number of data breaches worldwide actually went down. Unfortunately, the number of lost, stolen or compromised data records went up...72 percent!

There were 944 data breaches worldwide, nearly 60 percent occurred in North America. More than 3.3 billion data records were compromised or exposed. That works out to 18.5 million records per day. Nearly three quarters of a million records per hour!

According to the Breach Level Index:

• More than 76 percent of the records breached involved social media, including breaches at Facebook (2.1 billion records) and Twitter (336 million records).
• Malicious outsiders caused 56 percent of the data breaches.
• Attacks by malicious insiders fell by 60 percent.
• 879 million data records were lost by accident.
• Identity theft remains the leading type of data breach.
• The number of records stolen through identity theft breaches increased by 757 percent.
• Financial access incidents decreased in frequency but increased in severity.
• The healthcare industry experienced the most data breaches of any industry (27 percent).
• 20 percent of all breaches had an unknown number of compromised data records.
• Only one percent of the compromised data records were encrypted.

Data security has become a universal concern. Every business is at risk. None are immune. Since employee error is the root cause of most data security breaches, businesses must constantly train employees to understand, identify and avoid potential cyber threats.

The Human Equation prepares all risk management and insurance content with the professional guidance of Setnor Byer Insurance & Risk.